This week Lisa and I are going shopping! It is the New York International Gift Fair at the Javitz Center. Besides Toy Fair (mecca for toy retailers), NYIGF is the best way to learn about amazing new toys to add to GIFT HERO. We spent today walking through the general gift and accent on design sections. Tomorrow we will scour the Baby and Child floor where there’s sure to be too many great gifts to choose from.

We stocked up on educational toys and award winning toys including the coolest jewelry kits, arts and crafts sets, building toys, gifts for girls and gifts for boys. Visit us soon for great new kid’s gifts and old favorites from Alex Toys, Fashion Angels, Perplexus, Ogosport and many more.

This past Saturday was one of those days when my family didn’t leave our apartment. The snow turned to sleet and we cozied up in the family room reading, watching movies and playing games. Lisa had recommended Sketch It! from Blue Orange Games to us. Her kids (and the adults too) love this educational game. We just added this kid’s gift to GIFT HERO because her family was addicted.

Sketch It! is an unique drawing game that inspires creativity, quick thinking, and fine motor skills. With this award winning toy, both the sketcher and the decipherer can earn points. We all had a blast trying to draw at the right speed – too fast and you confuse the others…too slow and you miss your chance to score. Find Sketch It! and lots of other great educational toys for 8, 9 and 10 year olds on our site. It’s a perfect birthday gift.

Post-holiday toy madness, I was thrilled to open yesterday’s New York Times and find an article entitled Effort to Restore Children’s Play Gains Momentum. Given the ubiquity of computers, handheld electronic games, ipods, ipads, etc, many kids have forgotten (and some never learned) how to just play. When he was little (not that 7 years old isn’t still little…), Benjamin would tell me “my play is my work.” Even now, he can spend hours in his room building worlds from lego, blocks and anything else he can find. He gets completely absorbed in imaginary worlds and always tells me he needs more time to play. I often find him asleep at night wearing his Harry Potter cloak. Not that he doesn’t also love his DS and ipod – but he (and we) know there is a time and a place for all kinds of playing.

I personally believe that there is too much structured time in school. In kindergarten, Benjamin would come home complaining that there wasn’t enough “choice time.” This year, I think there is maybe 30 minutes a week when the kids can choose their own activity in the classroom. Given the incredible amount of learning required by school curriculums, this article is correct in saying that it is even more important that we enable kids to play when they are at home.

At GIFT HERO, we have always been big believers in play. We sell many kids gifts that inspire children including art kits, games, blocks, building sets and dress-up.  We love toys like the Pretend & Play Emergency Rescue Set from Learning Resources. This educational toy helps build language and social skills through imaginative play.

A mom recently asked me to recommend my favorite building toys for her two and a half year old son. She had recently purchased Design& Drill Takealong Toolkit from GIFT HERO, and was looking for more recommendations since her son was enthralled with it. This toy comes with a working “drill” that let’s kids put in and take out different brightly colored “screws” on the base, which folds up to double as a carrying case.

Fine motor skills develop at different rates for two and three year olds. It is important to select a building set that is age appropriate for their small hands. Sets made for older children have smaller pieces, which are difficult for little hands to master, and can prove frustrating.  Here are my top picks for building sets for two to three year olds.

TOMY Constructables, pictured above, lets kids build moving vehicles with working motors. All of the parts are interchangeable, so kids can use their own creativity and don’t have to follow diagrams or instructions (which most 2 and 3 year olds can’t really do anyway).

Kiddy Connects is a great manipulative toy and first building set. The brightly colored pieces snap together easily for little hands. They come in a zippered storage bag and are lightweight.

Snap N Learn Number Bugs are a hoot – not only do they help develop fine motor skills, but they also help teach numbers and color recognition. and the portable tub they come in is an added plus.

Stacking Construction Vehicles  (pictured below) and Stacking Emergency Vehicles are wooden trucks that kids can take apart and put together again. I love multi-use toys like this that can keep kids entertained for a long time in a variety of ways.

I’m in love with the Butterfly Alphabet Puzzle from ImagiPLAY. Not only is it gorgeous, but it helps kids learn the alphabet and develop fine motor skills. Plus, it is made from plantation-grown rubberwood (an environmentally friendly hard wood) AND hand-crafted and hand-painted with child-safe paints. It is truly a kids’ gift that keeps giving! It is a perfect gift for 3 year old girls (and gift for 4 year old girls and 5 year old girls).

For boys, we’ve got Puff the Alphabet Dragon (how cute is that name?). It’s got all the same specs as the butterfly and is a wonderful gift for 3 year old boys.

We just started carrying these and other kids’ gifts from ImagiPLAY. Their products are high quality, educational toys that are in the words of their founder “kid friendly and planet safe.” Who could ask for more!

Septoys seven sided design blocks are one of the most popular selling items at GIFT HERO this summer.  This isn’t a surprise to us because Septoys has won a slew of awards since it hit the market late last year, including the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Gold Seal Award, Creative Child Magazine Top Toy of the Year and Dr. Toy Best Picks Award. It’s very hard to find a product that wins that coveted triumvirate.

What makes Septoys unique? The blocks have seven sides – which allows for many, many more building possibilities than regular, four sided blocks. The set comes with  photos of 24 designs to get you started.  We also love the portability factor of Septoys – the 32 blocks are lightweight and store easily in the sturdy box – making it perfect to take on a family trip, to a restaurant or to a playdate.

Septoys is a great educational toy for ages 4 and up.  It really is a toy that kids won’t outgrow quickly because the design possibilites are endless and fun.

This afternoon, Benjamin told me he was bored with all of his toys. He asked if we could play with the Snap Circuits Jr. set I had given to him as a gift for his last birthday. Snap Circuits is an electronics kit with over 100 different projects. This toy has always been a favorite of Lisa’s son Josh and we had been saving it as an activity to do with Daddy. But…Daddy is in the city during the week this summer so I (reluctantly) agreed.

We had so much fun. Benjamin needed my help to understand how to follow the instructions (he is 6.5 and the toy is recommended as a kids’ gift for 8 and up…but I wholeheartedly recommend it as an activity for a grown-up to do with a 6 or 7 year old child). Once we both figured out how it all works – you follow very clear diagrams to snap different parts together onto a plastic board - we quickly got through the first few projects including turning on a light, powering a fan and playing a some music. He was so proud of his work that his face “lit up,” just like the bulb in the first project! I suspect we’ll do more tomorrow including #18, a Laser Gun

The projects get harder as you go through the book and by the end, kids will have made a doorbell, a burglar alarm, a radio and much more. Kids can even make up their own projects. When Benjamin read this, he told me he wants to create a robot – now that is definitely a project for Daddy!

My 8 year old son Josh is a true soccer fan. Thanks to my English husband, Josh has grown up watching soccer from his birth. On our annual trips to London, going to watch his favorite team, Tottenham Hotspurs, is always the highlight.

In honor of the World Cup, we have added Tabletop Soccer to GIFT HERO’s offerings. Josh has tested it out with his friends and gives it his seal of approval. Given the fine motor coordination involved, we recommend it for ages 6 and up. It also makes a great adult present – at 19″ by 16″, it’s perfectly sized for an office.

Since he was a baby, my now 6yo son Benjamin has loved vehicles – planes, trains, automobiles, you name it. I am pretty sure his first word was “car” and he used to spend hours looking down from our apartment window at all of the vehicles making their way down Lexington Avenue. His tastes have evolved over the years and have significantly influenced the selection of gifts for boys sold at GIFT HERO.

Over the past couple of years, Benjamin has been excited by remote control vehicles. We’ve tried all types from a batmobile to sports cars to soccer shoes that kick a ball (true, not really a vehicle). We are lucky enough to have a second home with a deck and yard and pool which has given Benjamin lots of places to play. Well…I have to say that a gravel driveway is not a great place for a typical remote control car.  They get stuck and spin their wheels and completely frustrate a young boy.

Last summer, a weekend guest gave Benjamin the Morphibians Land Shark.  Made by Kid Galaxy, this kids’ gift  is the coolest and sturdiest remote control car we have ever tried. It speeds across that gravel driveway, plows through sand and can even go in the pool.  As soon as we tried it (and everytime we played with it all summer, fall and winter (yes, can use in snow too), I knew it was on the short list for our outdoor gifts category. 

That reminds me…I need to pick up a pack of batteries for this weekend!

My nephew Adian is turning 7 in a couple of weeks, and I have been thinking about what we are going to send to him.  Adian lives in Toronto and we won’t see him until June so luckily GIFT HERO ships to Canada!

Like many 7 year old boys, Adian is really into science right now. Stepping into Science is a perfect choice because it provides an introduction to all of the major areas of science through hands on experiments. Unlike other science kits, Stepping into Science contains enough experiments to keep him busy for a long time – over 25 experiments!

Adian is also very creative and loves to draw and write. So I have also chosen Create Your Own Pop-Up Books for him. This kit comes with two hardcover “books” and tons of pop-up pieces, stickers and markers. I can’t wait to see what stories Adian creates, and hope that he will share them with us when he visits the U.S. in June.

If you would like other gift ideas for a 7 year old boy, check out our shopping category for 7 year old boys. We have lots of other choices like outdoor toys, building sets and games.