Stocking Stuffers your kids will still love after Christmas is over!

There’s nothing cuter on Christmas morning than little teddy bears with santa hats peeping out of your kids stockings – but what do you do with them when it’s time to pack away your Christmas stuff and your kids haven’t touched them in a week? Put them in a box for 11 months to (maybe) be played with again for a few weeks next December?

My husband and I Santa (of course) decided some time ago to instead focus on non-seasonally specific items for my girls’ stocking. Lately he’s been kind enough to also take into consideration items that will help Christmas morning go more smoothly, too. 🙂

See, when we do Christmas day with my parents and siblings, my girls are the only littles in the mix, and everyone else has no interest in awakening at 6:30 and opening gifts. I try to keep my girls content till 7 or 7:30, but I mean, they’re kids on Christmas  and that’s pretty much the highest level of excitement there is! So last Christmas we decided to let them go ahead and check out their stocking while everyone else lollygagged about. 😉

To give myself the longest stretch of sanity while my girls enjoy their stockings,  their contents need to have the potential to keep them occupied for awhile.

Here are the stocking stuffers top hits  for our girls ages two through nine:

1) Special art supplies like Kwik Stix. For extra sparkly fun I’d go with Metalix Kwik Stix (check out my review if you’re not sure what these are, my girls LOVE them!)

2) Small notebooks  – I like  these cute Frozen ones!

3) Individual packs of a favorite snack like Goldfish – since my girls are always way too caught up in the festivities to stop and eat breakfast.

4) Cute water bottles like these sturdy but adorable Contigo ones. Gets my girls having fun hydrating that morning, and can continue to be used all year long!

5) Candy – because it’s Christmas. But I’ve honestly never spent extra money to get special Christmas shaped chocolate or anything and my girls are still super happy.

6) Packs of  Crayola Model Magic or other soft clay or play dough.

7) A fun, engaging card game like Letters to Santa. Yes it’s Christmas themed but we love it and play it all year (or you could choose regular Love Letter, or Sushi Go, or whatever you want!)

8) Sticker books. OK so I know I started out bashing Christmas themed items, but these are consumable and will be used up that day anyway, so I let it slide here. I love this Dover Nativity sticker book! If you expect your kids to play with this longer than a day, you can always get a different theme. My girls love their silly face and make-a-monster ones!

9) Bible verse color-in note cards and and a pack of crayons. Even my 2 year old has a great time coloring these…probably just because she likes to do whatever her big sisters do. If you just have a toddler, she might get just as much enjoyment out of a pack of colored index cards, mine loves them!

10) Washi tape! All my girls love it. They can use it to decorate pages of their notebooks along with their Kwik Stix,  or use it to hang their favorite masterpieces on the wall.

What stocking stuffers are favorites at your house? If all my girls were about 8 and up or so, I’d Santa  would probably include some nail polish, but right now my 2 year old would be dying to use it immediately which wouldn’t be practical. I think Santa will probably give my 9 year old some lip gloss in a cute container this year.