I only have £50 to spend on DS age 3.5 from us & Santa

[timetosort]

My DS is 3.5 yrs and I'm so stuck what to buy as our Christmas budget is limited to £50. He's into his vehicles, emergency services, paw patrol. Should I get one present from us and a few bits from Santa ? Sweets to pad it out from Santa? Please help with some ideas

Some brilliant ideas so far everyone. -where can I put a Barbie dream house?- @SaveMeBarry that construction looks great and I've never seen the kids knex before, so that's a possibility.

@timetosort I’ve bought kid k’nex for a number of nieces and nephews at your ds age and they’ve loved it! I highly recommend .

Honestly I agree with every one else second hand all the way. I've bought second hand from dds 1st Christmas and still get a few bits now she's coming up to 11. gets harder as they are older!

a real favourite for my dds at 3.5 was a tent, real wow magical moment when Santa left it up in the front room surrounded by snowy footprints with balloons and small stocking inside. (toysforapound.com, Primark, wilko, supermarkets are your friend here!) The tent was the circus one from Ikea big enough for us to read bedtime stories inside. the tent was put up every birthday/Christmas since!

busy books are great for that age - book with playmat and 12 figures. usually around £5 from supermarkets or tkmaxx. they do Disney, paw patrol and lots of other characters.

Facebook marketplace is great for local bargains. dd2 bought a massive kidkraft Barbie sized house for £30 with her birthday money. it's taller than my 11 year old and came fully furnished! it's beautiful and would have cost over £200 new.

paw patrol wise the patroller, dogs in the cars and plane is great. the lookout is a waste of money, wouldn't bother even second hand. dd is pretty gentle but still constantly fell over and fell apart.

oh and a lovely fleece blanket is always a winner with my dds, I buy from either asda or primark. they are super soft and lots of characters or fun prints. cost around £6, wash well and great for cosying up on the sofa, snuggled in the car or buggy, or even when we've been to the cinema and it's been chilly 😁 wrapped with a dvd and a bag of popcorn would be a lovely Christmas eve gift (if you do that, its a tradition for us! new film, book, bath bomb and pjs opened on Xmas eve after laying out Santa treats. dvd usually from CEX and book from charity shop) the bath bombs this year are from Primark £1 each!

Stocking from Santa under tree from you.

eBay and charit shop for toys.
He's so young he'd be happy with anything, he shouldn't have a concept of amount

Hobbycraft are selling the big cardboard decorate your own play house things half price the now! I just bought the shop for my four year old. It'll build up big and something you could leave out from Santa with the wow factor! Down to £8 at the moment.

Just popping Barrie dream house on eBay brought these up..

Obviously I meant barbie not Barrie!

I often ask my now SEVEN year old if she remembers x, y or z from Christmas or birthdays when she was 3 & 4. Not a dickie bird. Seriously, you should NOT WORRY. Fifty pounds is more than enough -- he will not remember.

If I were you I would get a very big empty box. Fill it with blown up balloons. I did that one year - still down as best gift ever. Cheapest one for sure! :)

TKMaxx had big Catepillar digger sets that came with a toy hard hat the other day for £12! Lots and lots of other toys for around that price in there too.

The world has gone mad. £50 is more than enough for a 3.5 year old. Kids are happy unwrapping just about anything. You can get loads for £50, especially second hand.

Charity shops are great. Back in the day my dc had stocking filled with second hand stuff. If they noticed any scribbles in books we used to tut about the naughty elves.

We also filled stockings up with essentials that were needed anyway, shampoo, underpants, toothbrush. We topped up on felt tips and crayons. Actually, now my dc are older teenagers we still do this. Admittedly, they now get underwear that says ‘Jack Wills’ on it rather than Barbie...

Does a 3.5 year old really care who a present if from?

Poundland type shops are amazing for this.

One year for ds birthday I spent £20 in poundshop.

He has toy cars, stationary and outdoor toys (ball, frisbee etc). He still has some of these 5 years on.

That is plenty. Dont worry. I would go with one gift from me. A few gifts of small things he likes from Santa.

FB marketplace could be your saviour. Honestly my jaw nearly drops sometimes when I browse the categories and see how little a lot of the decent toys are, etc.

I've never bought from it but I do like looking. Your child will love whatever you/Santa give him!

Have to recommend toys for a pound it does what it says on the tin

At that age it’s really easy to add useful bits to stocking - matey bubble bath, a new eggcup, a money box, a timer for tooth brushing for example. Also, they find anything fascinating - my son at that age adored an elastic band ball that was in his stocking more than any other present.

The works is good value for money, I buy all the stocking fillers and some tree presents from there. They do 25% off online sometimes too.

Agree with Poundland and The Works, you can often get Paw Patrol bits in both of those in my town. Poundland usually has lots of emergency vehicles and the like too.

This is about what we spend on our DC, and they are older.

Set aside £10 for a stocking (if you want) - we focus on consumables so not spending money on useless stuff that'll get broken quickly.
Mini bags sweets, hot choc pouches, socks, satsumas, bubble bath, bubbles, pencils, stickers, mini torch etc

I don't know if anybody has mentioned this but home bargains have got branded toys in really cheap at the moment. I got my 3 year old ds a few Octonauts sets from there that were between £2.99 and £4.99 for decent size Fisher Price ones. A Jurassic World dinosaur that ds requested from the Smyths catalogue for £9.99 (still £25 in Smyths) and National Geographic dinosaur sets for £6.99 that are £17 on Amazon. There are loads of reduced toys in there.
I promise I don't work for them. They have just saved me a bit of money and I'm really pleased I looked in there before buying.

Sorry just noticed he likes vehicles. Loads of them too. I noticed a big section dedicated to Thomas and Friends. Also Tesco's currently has a huge firetruck half price at £20. You could get that as a big 'santa present' and still have £30 left for books/smaller toys/sweets etc.

Does he have a wooden train set? This is a great purchase that will be played with for a few years. Look at Lidl/Aldi or Brio secondhand.

Also look in Smyths (toys for under £10) and places like Home Bargains and Wilko are good too.

Budget for a stocking can be under £10, even £5. Chocolate coins, cheap book (try Poundland/Home Bargains) l, felt tips, drawing pad etc