Gifts for a child aged 5 or 6 — gift ideas

No time for the whole list? These are our four favourites for a child aged 5 or 6: IQ-Fit from SmartGames, which a 5 or 6-year-old solves all alone; the Djeco drawing and painting case with 46 pieces; Charlotte Dematons’ beautiful Alfabet to pore over endlessly; and the Kapla Summer Box they’ll build with for their whole childhood. Four gifts you can’t go wrong with.

A small gift for a 5 or 6-year-old, for the Sinterklaas shoe, for a birthday party or as a reward. Everything below costs less than ten euros.

With up to 25 euros there’s plenty of choice: a game, a reading book, a craft kit or something to take outside. Everything below has been picked for a child aged 5 or 6.

Puzzling is lovely concentrated fun, and at this age a lot is already possible. Alongside jigsaws, logic puzzles are a sure hit: you solve harder and harder challenges on your own, at home or in the car. Lotana has a large collection.

At this age they’d rather be outside all day. Small gifts for the garden and the beach, a football for the field, and a scooter with LED wheels as a big present that comes along to school every day.

At 5 or 6 the garden is a world of its own. A bug box and a magnifying glass to look at a woodlouse up close, a birdhouse to build yourself, binoculars for the woods or a plant pot to grow your very first sunflower. Gifts that lure them outdoors and let them go exploring on their own.

Kapla is a beautiful open-ended building system: identical wooden planks, no glue and no clicking together, just stacking and balancing. HEMA’s wooden building blocks are the affordable alternative, and Plus-Plus is a lovely building system with small pieces that come in tubes of a hundred, in dozens of themes.

A complete drawing and painting set, watercolours to start painting straight away, a mosaic that turns into a little artwork for the wall, or a flower press for the nature lover. LazyLama and Pipoos have plenty more. Also see our blogs on lovely drawing supplies for children and the best drawing books for children.

LEGO has been the gift that makes children happy for generations. At this age they build a set of 100 to 300 bricks themselves, from a vehicle to a day at the water park. Browse the full range in the LEGO Shop.

Groep 3 is a milestone, and nothing makes that first school day as exciting as having your own things. A sturdy backpack, a stainless-steel lunch box, a drinking cup and a PE bag for the gym. LazyLama has plenty more school things.

Alongside reading themselves, being read to stays lovely: classics and picture books that last for years and that you’ll want to read aloud again and again. LazyLama and Studio Bambacht have a lovely selection of children’s books for this age.

A 6-year-old is in groep 3 or about to start it — the year Dutch children learn to read — and nothing is as much fun as a book they can really read themselves. AVI Start and AVI M3 are the first Dutch reading levels, with E3 following at the end of the year. A first reading book, a joke book at AVI level or a game with letters turns practice into a party. These books are in Dutch, which is exactly what they’re learning at school. Also see our blog with reading tips for groep 3, written especially for beginner readers.

For cosy moments with the whole family. A card game is learnt in five minutes, memory trains the memory, and there are card games parents are just as keen to play. Lotana and 999 Games have the full range of children’s games.

A fun day out together is a treat in itself: you experience something special and make memories to talk about for ages. A few ideas:

🎪 Monkey Town or another indoor play centre

🛝 A big playground to run wild in

🦒 A day at the zoo or a children’s farm

🍿 A film night with popcorn (and staying up late!)

🏊 Swimming and playing at the pool