Gift Guide For a 5 Year Old Boy

Our son Soren turns 5 in a couple of days! Today I wanted to share the first of my gift guides for 2024. These gift ideas can be used for Christmas, for birthdays, and more!

**If you prefer a video format, I’m sharing these gift ideas over on my YouTube channel, too! I’ll embed the video down at the bottom of this blog post as well.

As usual, I only share items that I can actually recommend – items that we truly own, use, or love. With Christmas gift guides, there are sometimes a couple items I don’t own yet BUT am purchasing for my children – and I will always let you know which ones those are.

25 Tried & True Gift Ideas For a 5 Year Old Boy

*Some links I share are affiliate/referral links, which means I may earn a small commission. All opinions are my own. This post is not sponsored. If you do use my links, thank you – I appreciate it!

1 // Frog & Toad Treasury. We love Arnold Lobel in our household! He is a hilarious author and his books are perfect for young children! The ridiculous situations his characters face make his books so fun for all ages.

2 // Owl At Home. Also by Arnold Lobel. So fun to read with your kids, because just like in Frog & Toad, Owl runs into silly situations and processes things so uniquely. At around age 5, kids can really grasp why these situations are funny!

3 // Blue Hat, Green Hat: The Oops Book. This is another funny book! In it, different animals are getting dressed but the turkey always gets it wrong! Yes, I know this is a board book, but the silly patterns and illustrations still make it fun for a 5 year old!

4 // Eager Reader Bible. This is actually one of the children’s Bibles I grew up with, and it’s been fun for my oldest two children to enjoy at bedtime. It has a sweet structure to it; it has pictures and text on every page, but every couple of pages it has an “eager beaver” comprehension question. Perfect for early listening and comprehension skills!

5 // Curious George’s ABCs. It’s a board book and has those older illustrations of Curious George, It goes through the whole alphabet, one letter at a time, and each letter of the alphabet is built into a fun illustration! It’s engaging and fun!

6 // Sticker By Letter Book: Trucks. It’s like those paint by number canvases, but you use a sticker instead! There are many “paint by number” sticker books out there, but this one uses the letters of the alphabet instead of numbers, which makes it much more feasible for a 5 year old! Soren has loved doing these sticker books with me.

7 // My Father’s Dragon. This is a book I grew up reading. I’ve read it to my 3rd graders when I was a classroom teacher, and I’ve read it at least a couple times to my own children. We absolutely love it. It’s a tale of adventure. It’s about a boy who goes off to rescue a baby dragon who’s being used as transportation flying back and forth across a river (he’s being used by the animals of Wild Island). He has to pack intentionally for the trip, and be clever and smart as he tricks different animals. I love the fact that it’s a great adventure but it’s also more tame – while there is mystery and adventure, it’s not too scary. You could read it to your kids before bedtime. 🙂

There’s also a stuffed animal of Boris (the dragon), which would be a cute little bundle to give as a gift!

8 // Dino Eggs. You can find “dino dig” eggs at Walmart or Amazon. They’re pretty inexpensive, and so popular and fun! Kids love digging for dinosaurs, for gems, etc., so these make a perfect gift! A little toy is hidden inside some plaster-of-Paris type material and it’s fun for kids to chisel out!

9 // Yoto Player. If you’ve been around here a while, then you know I can’t get through a gift guide without mentioning the Yoto Player! Yoto Players are hands-down the best way for kids to enjoy audiobooks and audio content! They’re so good for children’s attention span, listening skills, vocabulary levels, you name it! It’s not strictly character stories or Disney shows – there are so many Yoto cards out there with classic literature (think things like The Jungle Book, Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, etc.).

I have a couple videos and blog posts all about the Yoto Player, including our exact favorite cards, so I’ll link them below:

Save 10% off your first purchase of $69.99 or more with this link!

My Video All About the Yoto Player

My Blog Post About the Yoto Player (including our favorite cards)

Headphones We Use

Credit Card Case to Store Yoto Cards

10 // Pogo Jumper. There’s a whole variety of designs and themes. It’s a great way to get that energy out if you’re stuck indoors for whatever reason. The one Soren has does squeak (my daughter’s did not squeak). It’s a foam block with a stretchy bungee cord and your child holds onto the handles and jumps! They’re pretty inexpensive, too!

11 // Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game. It’s one of those younger multi-player games where you have to spin a spinner, take turns, collect different colored acorns, and use little squirrel tongs to pick up the acorns!

We also have a game called Sophie’s Seashell Scramble that is similar – the kids love these kinds of games!

12 // Gears Building Set. This is probably one of my favorite items in today’s list! The gears get used every single day in our household! I just store them in a small bin. They’re very easy to interlock and to click onto the building boards. It’s amazing seeing the different things Soren can build with these gears!

13 // Rock Tumbler. You know how little boys are always collecting rocks and bringing them inside? This is a great way to channel that desire! You can find a rock tumbler on Amazon! They work surprisingly well. Sometimes you have to buy some kind of ceramic “media” to help polish the rocks, but I believe the two rock tumbler kits we have included some grit.

This has been such a fun hobby! It is a delayed gratification type of hobby, but it’s kind of neat that it takes at least several weeks to get to that final polished stage. My husband and the kids love checking about once a week to see the progress our rocks are making! So, if you know a little boy who loves collecting rocks, this gift idea could be a good way to make use of that rock collecting hobby he already has!

Rock Tumbler that Soren originally saved up for (this kit comes with grit, plus some rocks!)

Our 2nd Rock Tumbler (both work great – we just have 2 going now, and this 2nd one is quieter! This one does come with some grit)

Extra Rock Tumbler Grit

14 // Clixo Magnetic Building Set. Clixos are flexible, thick plastic pieces with magnetic “nodes” on them – perfect for building all sorts of things like silly hats, helicopters, etc. They have been such a hit. The kids still love playing with these almost every day, and we’ve owned them for a year! I’ve even put them on the refrigerator for my 1 year old to play with, too! But this is a great gift for a 5 year old boy who loves to build things!

Bonus: they’re much easier to pack up and transport to places like waiting rooms than Magna-Tiles are!

15 // Zoo Membership. I feel like this is the perfect age to go explore and learn about animals! And then you’re encouraging screen-free time, family time, learning time…it’s just so good for them all around! So, if the family of the boy you’re shopping for doesn’t have a zoo membership yet, I would definitely recommend that! If you can, try to get them a zoo membership that allows not just the family, but an extra guest or two. That way, they could bring a grandparent or a friend along for extra fun. Regardless, it is wonderful to get a zoo membership of any kind!

I’ll link below a site where you can find a zoo near you – or you can type in the name of the town for the little boy you’re shopping for:

Find a Zoo Near You

16 // Head to Tail Puzzles. These are wonderful! We’ve had this ever since our oldest was maybe 2, but it’s perfect for ages 3-6. Instead of matching just a head and a tail of each animal, there are 3 pieces involved, which adds a little extra challenge because your child has to find the head, body, and tail! There are 20 animals included. I love the real photos of the animals, too!

17 // Balance Board. These are pretty simple – just a plastic curved balance board! We have two, and we got ours from the local thrift store. They’re technically meant for fitness for adults, but they’re so fun for kids to get energy out in a healthy way. You can stand on it and rock and balance, or you can flip it over upside-down and crawl on it!

18 // Hot Wheels Car Track Set. They’re pretty inexpensive. It’s just an orange track that you can build onto and make it as long as you want! We love putting the tracks on the stairs and run little cards down the stairs that way!

19 // Schleich Animals. They’re a hard animal toy and they’re so realistic looking! Our kids play with our Schleich animals every day. Such high quality. I’ve only purchased a few at a time because they are a bit more of an investment, but we’ve been able to really build up our collection over time. They’ve got practically any animal you could think of! We especially love the farm animals and other wild or zoo animals, but there are also some mythical animals like unicorns.

20 // Magna-Tiles. I know these are so popular now days, but for good reason!! Our Magna-Tiles get used literally every single day! They also make a set of a couple car bases so your child can turn Magna-Tiles into vehicles!

21 // Children’s Picture Atlas. This might sound random, but my son Soren loves atlases and maps! We have an Usborne Children’s Atlas, and he loves studying it during Quiet Time and trying to understand the world around him. Having a little atlas can really spark adventure in the mind of a 5 year old boy, and it’s just plain interesting and educational for them! We also have a big Maps book he loves!

22 // Campfire & S’mores Set. I love this set so much, I’ve actually gifted it to a couple other people! Your child gets to “chop” the little velcro log of wood, they get to build a fire with a plush flame piece…and then there are sticks with removable marshmallows! The really neat thing about the marshmallows is that they are plush and can turn inside out to make it look like they’ve been toasted golden brown! Such a fun make-believe set!

23 // Camping Sounds Lantern. Although this doesn’t come with the campfire & s’mores set, I would definitely recommend getting it alongside that set if possible! It adds a lot to the pretend play experience! I wanted Soren to have the ability to have nature sounds or fire sounds, and this lantern has everything you’d need: river sounds, birds singing, crickets chirping, a fire crackling…it’s so much fun!

24 // Animal Habitats Sticker Book. This is a larger size sticker book, and it’s perfect for things like road trips (or really anywhere!). The way this company makes their sticker books, when you open the book, the scene is on the left and the stickers needed are on the right! It’s so easy to open and go, especially for a 5 year old boy. This way he doesn’t have to flip back and forth!

We love the animal habitats one, but they also make a fun birds sticker book and dinosaurs sticker book!

25 // Over-the-Door Basketball Hoop Set. This set hangs over your child’s bedroom door, and comes with 4 small inflatable squishy basketballs. I specifically chose one that doesn’t make noise or keep score. We’ve really liked this one!

**Bonus gift idea: Wooden Montessori style tool board

Hope this was helpful for you! Happy shopping!

-Hannah

PS: If you’re a mom of young children, be sure to check out my free webinar for climbing out of overwhelm!!