Hanukkah Gifts: Hits and Misses

It’s rough thinking of gifts this time of year for my son.  Reason being that not only do we have to come up with 8 gifts for Hanukkah, but we also have Christmas to buy for as well as his January 2nd birthday.  I walk into Toys R Us and my head starts spinning. In this era all most kids want are games for their Xbox, PSP and Wii’s.  However I refuse to get revolve every gift around playing isolating video games. I LIKE spending time over a game of something with my son.

And it’s funny, I sat down with a girlfriend who has a son the same age as mine. Nine going on 10.  When I read off some of the games I was buying, it hit her that they have not one single board game in their house aside from that Cherry Picking game for their 5 year old. Funny, huh? On a side note, this led me to hit Toys R Us yet one more time after that and buy them a load of family board games which I have put into a basket and will give as their family gift this year. Scrabble, Clue, Monopoly Junior, Twister, Apples to Apples, Who Am I? If you have any more suggestions for that basket, let me know!

And so Hanukkah goes…….

Night #1:  IPod Touch. Yes, the one that the tooth fairy did not leave him for any of the 4 teeth he lost in the past month. Huge hit and the best part is that I could finally get all of HIS games off of MY Iphone. We do the big gift on the first night in our house.

Night #2: Scribblenauts for Nintendo DS. Could quite possibly have been more of a successful gift if is Nintendo DS wasn’t broken. I had no clue of course that it was broken……..until night #2.  Fortunately Santa gave me a heads up that he planned on upgrading that DS to a DSI for Christmas.

Night #3:  An ITunes gift card. This is a must if you are giving a child an IPod Touch, otherwise you’ll be asked every half an hour if he can use your account to buy songs and applications.

Night #4:  The game of Clue. Yes, the same $9.99 board game I played as a child.  Major hit! We played about 6 round of it that night. Perfect family game!

Night #5:  Connect 4×4.  Played several rounds of it that night. Not quite the success that Clue was.  Personally I think it’s requires more concentration than a 10 year old is interested in giving. It’s a little more difficult than the regular version of Connect 4

Night #6:  SpyGear Evidence Kit.  Minorly successful gift. Held his interest for about half an hour and he will probably pick it up again another time. We played 4 games of Clue that night.

Night #7:  Mastermind.  This is a keeper too. Though not quite as fun as Clue and he also cheated a couple of times by sneaking looks at the answer, I think it’s a game we will get some good mileage out of. Providing of course, the pegs don’t get lost or eaten by the dog.

And tonight, the last night…..the Nintendo DS Lego Indiana Jones game. Clearly a winner before it’s even opened.

Now onto Christmas  and his birthday we go………