Smaller presents that your kids love and play with longer than the Christmas holidays

[Coldcafeeveryday]

My kids are 7 (DD) and 4 (DS) years old. I'd like to buy some smaller/cheaper presents for them that they will continue to play with for longer than the Christmas holidays. They love animals, make believe/dress up, crafts and preferably something that would encourage them to play together.

Can anyone recommend something tried and tested for say less than £20?

Top trumps

Role play stuff always a hit with my two.
we got a sweet shop from Argos think in the 2 for £15 range and that’s bought out regularly - particularly on movie nights. They make cinema tickets and set up the sweet shop for us to buy sweets from and rent a cuddly toy!
saw a brilliant idea on here where someone laminated X-rays, lists etc for different activities and gave with a clipboard for role play too….

My two are slightly older. They enjoy playing games together like Uno, snakes and ladders, Dobble. Orchard Toys do loads of good, easy games for under £20. They also do a lot of role play games together, they usually use toy food / toy pans / toy kitchen and soft toy animals for those, sometimes the baby dolls too. They both have Yotos and cards for those always go down well if they're tailored at their interests. Foil art is another good one.

got my 5 year old a little live pet last year quite last minute as an extra present - its a puppy that barks and you can feed with a bottle and it opens it eyes and stuff - comes in a carry box and you can get it to sleep laying it on its side - its still played with most days - and her younger brother has been taking it to bed with him lately - they play games of taking it to the vets together and wrap up its paw and things like this

she then got some little turtles - i think they were called pets alive - and you fill this box with some water and hatch the turtles out of little eggs (you can reset and hatch again also so it's not single use)

they play with this loads too

As @ACatInHellsChance says, Orchard Toys are great. We've used the Shopping List supermarket trolley game and the Lunch box one for five or six years, but eventually they're obviously too babyish. Their pairs games are good too, Jumble Jungle is a favourite and is one where a younger child can be as good as older children. The same is true of the Pizza making game.
We've also got a bingo game with a big rotating ball holder and loads of cards with counters to cover the numbers - great for a wet afternoon and you can fill in more than one card to make it slightly more tricky.

Story dice are great for that age gap, they can make up silly adventures together and it costs very little. A big tube of animal figures is another one that gets played with for years, they can build zoos and farms and it feeds the make-believe side.

My 5yo can play it. He did need some support initially to learn the basic premise but it's easy to understand the two most basic objects of the game: Making longer routes rather than shorter ones, and connecting two specific cities with your trains.

They don't get the more strategic aspects of the game at that age but that's OK, it's still fun. We also skip the rule which says you can get extra tickets because I think it's a bit too complicated for them to make a decision on. Originally we started with 1 each and now we start with 2 each, and other than this, they are only ever deciding whether to draw colour cards or place carriages. We do keep the rule of points for the longest train, though :)

Santorini is another good one which is 8+ on the box but again we have been playing since DC were about 4, because the basic premise of moving, then building and trying to climb up to level 3 or prevent your opponent from doing so is extremely simple to learn. What is great about Santorini is the "God power" cards which get introduced once you've learnt the basic game, the instructions separate them into simple and advanced but I cut the simple ones down further just to a couple that I felt he could understand and then introduced new ones 1-2 at a time. You can vary the difficulty of the game by e.g. giving the younger child a power and adults not, or giving the child 2 powers and adult only 1, etc.

YY to Uno and Dobble being very replayable as well.

The cheap magnetic blocks that look like Minecraft pieces have been a suprise winner!

Tea set, walkie talkies, Playmobil is an excellent suggestion.

Tea set, walkie talkies, Playmobil is an excellent suggestion.

My granddaughter age 6 has played schools for a couple of years now.
I’ve bought her stuff over time but actually you can do it quite cheaply and have as a bundle.
a whiteboard - try home bargains
whiteboard pens and wiper
lanyard
whistle
notebooks - Asda do 3 for a pound
plain stickers to ‘label the bags’
ziplock bags for school bags
empty herb bottles for ‘children’s waterbottles
flannels for sleepovers/movie night /swimming ( you can see my dgd has a vivid imagination)
post it notes ( for notes to parents!)
a selection of felt tips/gel pens/pencils/ crayons and rubbers /sharpeners
Reward stickers
We take it very seriously when we play!
Hope this helps

Great ideas- just bought Dobble (Super Mario) for my DCs- 24 and 19!

Farm animals.
Felt-tip pens.
Marble run.
Tea set.