Christmas Gift Ideas for Tween Boys (or Girls!)

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The tween boy can be so hard to shop for. They are growing out of enjoying playing with toys (or they have already been for awhile) and it can be difficult to find something that they really enjoy.

Here are some brilliant gift ideas for the tween boys in your life. I have many different gift ideas, ranging in cost from free to a couple hundred dollars. Most of the ideas here are between $10-$30 though.

As a heads up I consider tween to be between the ages of 9-12.

Geodes

Smashing geodes open is so much fun and it’s exciting to see what the geode looks like inside. When my kids and I broke into some geodes it was really cool to see the different types of rocks/crystals inside. It took us a while to get the geodes to crack open.

I saw someone has used a tile saw before to cut open the geodes and the results were great! They were able to slice some of the pieces so you could hold it up to the light and see what it looks like when the light shines through it.

You can find this great geode set here

Board games

Many of the tween boys I know enjoy playing board games. Some favorites to play with friends are:

Dragonwood
Evolution or Evolution the Beginning
Exploding Kittens
Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert (these are both very similar games. We have and love playing both. )

Pokemon cards

Our 10-year-old neighbor loves Pokemon cards. He loves adding cards to his collection as well as playing the game with others.

Kayak

If you can get this on sale, sometimes you can get a cheaper one for around $100.00. We have a friend who has a couple kayaks and we took all our boys out to the river with them last summer. The boys loved playing around with the kayaks in the river.

Remote Control car or helicopter

Remote control cars have been enjoyed by tween (and older and younger kids) for decades. These never seem to go out of style. When my kids visit a couple of tweens this is what they do – they all bring out their remote control cars and race them down the road (the friends live on a dead end, paved road without much traffic). It doesn’t seem to get old and sometimes they build ramps for the heavier duty RC cars.

Remote control car and helicopter here.

Legos

Legos are so much fun and it seems like kids – including tween really love them. What’s not to love though? It’s lots of fun building things out of bricks.
You can find some legos here.

Model car or plane kit

My tween is just getting into building model cars and planes. Here is a fun jeep and here is a cool plane that would be lots of fun to put together.

Dinosaur bone chisel set

These are so much fun and tweens are still in the age range of enjoying these sets. You can find a dig set with a real dinosaur tooth, poop and a dinosaur bone here.

If your tween prefers sharks, check out this shark tooth digging set.

Nerf Guns

I’m not sure when nerf guns get boring to kids – never? My husband still likes playing with them….

These are some fun nerf guns.

Bow and Arrows

Tweens love using bow and arrows. Check to see if you have a shooting range near where the tween lives and they can bring their bow and arrows to practice target shooting. Here is a decent bow and arrow set. These aren’t toys, so make sure your tween is mature enough and has a safe place to practice before giving this as a gift.

Frisbee

Need a fun gift that is not going to break the pocketbook Try a frisbee. They are tons of fun and super easy to pack to bring along if your tween is headed to the beach or park.

This is the frisbee that we love in our household. We have times we are invited to birthday parties and no gifts are expected, but I’ve wanted to bring something smaller for the birthday boy and this is what we bring in those cases.

Box of the Month Club

As a kid, mail is always fun to get. There are some awesome box of the month clubs depending on the interests of the tween.

If he is interested in STEM these are a couple good ones:
TinkerCrate
Amazon’s Stem Club

Magazines

Magazines are another fun one to receive in the mail. You could choose a magazine that is about a favorite sport or hobby.

Praying Mantis egg sac

I find my tween boy loves anything having to do with nature. Praying mantis are fairly rare where I live, although we do see them occasionally.

This will take a bit of patience, depending on how long before you buy your tween recipient the Praying Mantis egg sac. It takes a few weeks (up to 8) after receiving for it to hatch.

We’ve purchased this one and it took ours about 5 weeks to hatch.

Drawing Set

If your tween likes to draw, some nice pencils, pens and a drawing pad just might be the perfect gift.

Books

Depending on the tween, they might enjoy receiving a book. It doesn’t have to be a fiction book, it could be one about a hobby or some sort of activity book, such as;

bird book
mushroom hunting
Klutz makes some super fun books. My son has really enjoyed their dragon paper airplane book.

Tools

If the tween is interested in woodworking at all, some tools could be the way to go.

You could create a toolbox for your tween with the box, plus some of the more common tools that he would need for building.

hammer
screwdrivers
tape measure
pliers
monkey wrench
an assortment of nails and screws
tape and glue (making and duct tape and some gorilla and wood glue)

You can make the box as elaborate with different tools as you wanted to. You could even include a woodworking book with some beginner projects in it and maybe throw in a gift certificate to your local hardware store so he can pick up some wood for his next project.

Lessons

You could gift the tween with lessons in an area that he is interested in. Karate, parkour, guitar, drums, ceramics, whatever their interests or passions might be.

Tickets

Another fun present would be for tickets to a show of some sort. This show could be monster trucks, a play or concert or something else that is coming through town and he would enjoy going to.

Coupon Book

You could also make a coupon book. This can be things such as a coupon good for a sword fight with you or a watermelon seed spitting contest. There are lots of fun things you could do together.

I hope I have given you some good gift ideas for a tween boy.

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Author

Jenny

Jenny is a homeschooling Mom to 3 active boys. She lives in an old 1915 farmhouse and loves it.
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