I get asked this question a lot: “What should I get my (6-11) year old this holiday season?” I think I get the question a lot because of this blog. Friends of the family seem to turn to my Mom a lot and ask her, “your kids (in our 30s, mind you) play games a lot so what should I get my kid?”
Since I’ve been married for almost 3 years, I’m also getting the question from extended family a lot. In the past couple of years its been easy to say something like Skylanders or Disney Infinity, but this year I’m lacking ideas for kids other than things like Mario Odyssey and obviously a Switch for those games.
I’d like to solicit help from those of you with kids (or maybe you’re like me and a big kid at heart) for ideas that I can share with them. I’d love to hear what your kids are into, whether it’s toys, gadgets, or games. I’ll pass the info along to the 10 or so people in my life begging to be that cool parent this season. Thanks for the help!
Just asked my 8y what was popular among his classmates. In my case i allow shooters if they are in a sci-fi context, i.e vs aliens. No gta v for sure.
Ps4:
Destiny 1 ( my 8y has 2 char 300+ light just by walking around doing public events)
Battlefront 2
Minecraft ( still a major favorite with his friends)
Ipad:
Wwe supercard
Bounzie
Idle miner
Colour switch
Terraria
Funny thing is, he switches game based in what i am playing. If in playing d3, he gets on ipad order of chaos 2, if i play Stellaris, he goes to European War 4.
He nodded while i was writibg this. Kid approved.
That’s awesome 🙂 Thanks so much for your recommendations. The iPad game ideas are great!
All respect to Higgs and all, but 8 year olds have no business playing Destiny or any of the Battlefronts.
My nine-year old’s favourites right now are Minecraft, Pokemon Go and Mario Run.
Off the top of my head, some other fun and popular games for that age are Splatoon, any of the Mario Karts, Spore (awesome fun with the character creator), pretty much any of the Pokemon games.
I think it’s very subjective for sure. I think the nice thing about Battlefront is the complete lack of blood (since it’s Star Wars and all, it’s a fairly protected experience).
Splatoon and the Pokemon games are great, and I think Mario Run is phenomenal as well.
My six yr old still really loves Minecraft. She also plays Roblox for the computer (ftp but has a cash shop). She’s likes playing Little Big planet too once in awhile. Amazon has a kids tablet that’s really good and comes with a free yr of Amazon Free time, which is been really awesome entertainment.
There’s really some neat toys that you can build and program them to do things yourself. I personally want a Cozmo (see adorable youtube videos) but the pricetag is pretty hefty for me right now.
Amazon tablet is a great idea. I’m actually looking at that right now to see what it can do. I think that’s a great idea for kids who aren’t ready to handle mommy and daddy’s $1000 ipad Pro. 😀
I hadn’t heard about the Cozmo before. This thing is really cool. Makes me wish I had stuff like that growing up.
I think the only thing I would recommend with the Amazon tablet is a bigger storage card.
Yeah, these new toys are pretty swank. Even Lego sets seem much cooler these days. ^_^