The five best Christmas gifts for young children

In this article, we’ll introduce five of the best Christmas gifts for toddlers ages 2-4. These are formative years for your children and they need gifts that will entertain and educate them, also known as “Educational Entertainment Gifts.”

The first giveaway in this Edutainment category comes from Step 2 and is called the Waterwheel Activity Play Table. Children love to play with water and the WaterWheel Play Table provides safe, interactive water fun while providing valuable cause and effect learning for your children.

In our tests with children ages 2-4, we found that they never got tired of the WaterWheel. In fact, the older kids seemed to gravitate towards him as well. Kids can load up the WaterWheel and then play lots of games involving cups, sailboats, and of course the waterwheel. By performing certain actions, children can create many fun directions in the water and realize how their actions affect play behavior. The WaterWheel can be enjoyed by up to 3 children at a time.

Fisher Price wins second prize for Best Toddler Christmas Gifts with its Brilliant Basics Baby’s First Blocks. Like many Fisher Price toys, this provides endless entertainment for children while teaching valuable coordination lessons. In the game, children are given large, bright, and colorful blocks that they must place in the correct spaces. When they have accomplished this, the children enjoy knocking the blocks over and starting again. At less than $10, this gift offers unlimited fun at a very affordable price.

Playskool rings in at number three with the Busy Ball Popper. Playskool, a consistent manufacturer of quality children’s toys, offers an animated game in the Busy Ball Popper. In the game, the colored balls are placed on a track and then shot from the top, bringing endless joy to your little kids. The Popper clearly meets the entertainment threshold and earns its educational status as it teaches your kids valuable motor skills.

Our fourth offering is perhaps the absolute best gift for the little boy who indicates an artistic bent. It is for the young Picasso or Monet. It’s called the Melissa and Doug Deluxe Standing Easel. This free standing easel is a chalk board and dry erase board all in one. We like the imaginative drawing of the Easel when children actively engage their mind by drawing and redrawing objects. This is a definite must for discovering your child’s imaginative powers.

Finally, one of the most sought after gifts for Christmas 2009 is offered by ZhuZhu Pets and is called Funhouse Set with Hamster. This is for ages 3+ and is slightly more expensive than the other offerings as it employs a lot of new technology. This game features Patches the Hamster, an intelligent motorized creature that moves around a Funhouse. Patches talks, explores, naps and entertains his children with various expressions and features. His sons are taught valuable lessons in care and nurturing and will enjoy the patches to no end.

Each of these gifts makes a great Christmas gift for young children in 2009 and provides great opportunities for entertainment and learning!