Eco-Friendly Gifts for Kids
When it comes to eco-friendly gifts for kids, most preschoolers and young children are pretty easy to please. They haven’t been as influenced by friends and the media as older kids, so creative toys like building blocks, dolls, plushies, art supplies, or games will be a big hit.
But trying to find non-toxic or sustainably made versions of these standby toys can be a challenge. After 13 years of working on our annual green gift guides, we’ve developed zero tolerance for cheap plastic toys… especially when reliable brands are making better and safer toys.
Once you shift your mindset from quantity to quality (besides – too many toys can squelch a child’s creativity), you’ll fall in love with the idea of raising your child with fewer toys. Natural toys bring calm to your home. And they’re much less startling than a toy bin that plays music at odd hours of the day and night because it’s filled with overstimulating plastic toys with no “off” buttons.
If you’re buying for tiny ones, check out this list of green and safe holiday gifts for babies. Or see the best natural gifts for toddlers. For older kids, jump to the section of gifts for big kids. Or find our tween and teen holiday gift guide.
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Eco-Friendly Gifts for Little Kids
Here’s our selection of gifts that fall into one or more of the following categories: eco-friendly, non-toxic, wooden toys, ethically made, or high quality and long lasting so they won’t break and end up in a landfill anytime soon.
Sustainable Cottage Playhouse from Make It Cute
An eco-friendly playhouse that actually looks nice in your living room? Yes, please! Make It Cute delivers with this cottage and a gorgeous farmhouse just for kids. Adorable accents like a hand-illustrated door knocker, vintage-style light fixture, and whimsical climbing vines make this a charming space to foster hours of fun.
This darling little house sets up in 60 seconds and folds flat for storage. Most importantly, it’s made from recycled materials, is phthalate-free, and passes all safety standards.
Make It Cute also offers decor kits so little ones can get even more creative with the space… and you can rest assured it’ll still be cute!
Charmspring Custom Schedule Board
Charmspring’s customizable, visual schedule features interactive tiles that represent tasks and activities like breakfast, bath time, travel and field trips, making everyday transitions easier for kids and parents alike.
Place it on a shelf or the wall at eye level with your child. Charmspring offers a board for babies, toddlers, and school aged kids.
House of Miniature Maileg Dollhouse
This charming dollhouse is the perfect place for your mice and bunnies to call home. Dollhouses are an instant catalyst for imaginative play that can help children develop language, communication, and social skills.
Through play, little ones can explore concepts like family, home, and relationships that will encourage their bonding and nurturing instincts. Plus a dollhouse is just fun!
Playper sets are made from a high-quality, durable and thick cardboard-based material used. It’s recyclable and holds up great to extensive play.
Montessori Climbing Triangle
Small children gain big benefits from climbing toys. And this versatile toy encourages imaginative play, creativity, teamwork, and balance.
Made from FSC Birch plywood coated with non-toxic stains and sealants. Available in several colors and combinations, your child can climb, rock, read, build a fort, put on a puppet show and so much more.
Charlie the Weighted Puppy
Emotional security designed for littlies. Charlie is a soft, and weighted puppy dog that is perfect for all children including our sensory and anxious friends. Backed by evidence-based research, Charlie helps with reducing anxiety and improving sleep quality.
You might be surprised at how much you like hugging this adorable weighted puppy too! Charlie and other sweet animals also come with a mindfulness bedtime set.
Maleg Rabbit in Carry Cot
A soft carry cot made in a beautiful fabric where the small bunny in colorful suit can easily be tucked for a nap, covered in the knitted blanket to keep warm.
Curated Play Kits by Age
Lovevery offers an amazing curated toy kit subscription. They basically do all the research for you when it comes to choosing age appropriate toys.
These sets help you support your child’s learning (kits available for babies – children age 5) during important developmental windows with play essentials that are tailored to their exact stage.
All their toys are made from sustainable and nontoxic materials, recycled materials, soy based inks, and safe silicones.
Wooden Workbench
Lalo’s kitchen set (below) was a huge hit with our readers last year. Now their workbench is the perfect place for your little one to tackle handy projects, equipped with all the tools they need to get the job done.
Montessori Inspired Wooden Play Kitchen
There are lots of benefits of setting up a Montessori kitchen at home. You can DIY it or buy one like the newly redesigned wooden kitchen from Lalo.
With doors that open and knobs that mimic real-life functions, Lalo’s kitchen promotes child-led play and open-ended fun. Made with sustainably sourced birch plywood and solid beech wood, with non-toxic clear lacquer finish.
And with a no-tool assembly design, your child can be making pretend holiday pancakes within 5 minutes on Christmas morning.
Montessori Busy Board
Want to keep a little one engaged and safely occupied? This busy board has it all.
Specially designed to entertain small children and help develop motor skills, this educational board also helps encourage logic, memory, finger grip, and attention. A child learns new subjects, forms, and colors. This sensory busy board improves coordination of movements and self-service skills.
If this one is TOO busy for your little busybody, there are plenty of simpler boards to choose from as well.
Woodland Friends Dolls and Animals
Choose from lovable favorites like Reginald Fox, Lewis Toad, or Juliette Rabbit and customize their outfits. Hazel Village organic dolls and animals are ethically made by women in Peru, Nepal, and Cambodia. Just so you know… Once your child falls in love with one of these sweet critters, they’ll want to add more to their collection of forest friends!
Sensory Swing
This sensory swing works both indoors and outdoors. It’s a great way to support proper vestibular system development in kids. The swinging motion helps to neutralize disruptions and helps calm and regulate the nervous system. It also helps improve body awareness, muscle tone, balance, and coordination.
Some parents swear it helps calm a meltdown. Others say their child stays in it for long periods of time, either actively swinging or just lounging belly-first.
Travel Explorer Kit
Encourage your child’s curiosity with this miniature suitcase complete with pocket compass, binoculars, travel book, and treasure box. Impeccably illustrated and crafted from the finest French materials, this set may become a family keepsake.
Moulin Roty combines gentleness with fantasy and tenderness with an irreproachable quality standard. This worker-owned cooperative, focuses on emotions when inventing appealing characters, games, toys and gifts. Their wish is to create memories, secretly hoping that they will be passed down from one generation to the next.
Goose Bean Bag
Kids love a cozy spot for reading or quiet time. This bean bag goose is made from 100% organic cotton and is filled with spelt husks.
Jetaire Camper Playhouse
This adorably detailed playhouse allows children endless imaginative play with pretend road trips and camping.
Handmade and hand stitched, this camper playhouse features seven windows, embroidered license plate, and patchwork tires
Kaleidoscope Play Camera
Help your little one see the world in a different way with one of our favorite eco-friendly gifts for kids. Detachable straps make this pretend camera easy to bring along on all of your outdoor adventures.
Made from natural beech wood, this play camera allows little ones to imagine they’re capturing every brilliantly unique scene around them. Turn the removable lens for a kaleidoscope surprise.
Unicorn and Narwal Horns Sidewalk Chalk Set
Unicorn and Narwhal horns for creating magical drawings! Set includes three Unicorn sidewalk chalk horns and three Narwhal sidewalk chalk horns.
Made by a woman-owned company, these eco-friendly, childhood classics are handmade and perfectly designed for little hands, helping to increase grip strength and fine motor skills while encouraging creative play and imaginative making.
Freestanding Wooden Fresh Mart Grocery Store
Melissa and Doug’s sturdy wooden grocery store setup allows children to browse and shop or ring up items.
With a hand cranked conveyor belt, a bagging area, card swipe machine, a realistic beeping scanner, and cash drawer, children will enjoy hours of imaginative play.
Car Display Shelf Wall Art
Handmade and eco-friendly, it’s a toy organizer and adorable wall art in one! The wheel size is 24″ diameter, slats are 1.5 inches wide – it can hold up to 64 cars.
The outer frame the shelf featured above is made from a refurbished used tire, keeping more tires out of landfills. This Etsy store sells out quickly and some of the similar items use a new tire. A shelf with a new tire might need a few weeks to off-gas the rubber and plasticizers before you install it in your child’s room.
Eco-Friendly Gifts for Big Kids
Eco-friendly items are a little harder to find when you’re shopping for big kids. The good news is – older kids don’t typically put toys in their mouths. So there’s less immediate worry about toxins in plastic. But we still believe safety and sustainability matter for humans of all ages.
Look for items that will last a long time, rather than the latest cheaply-made trend that breaks or won’t catch your child’s interest in a few months. And don’t overlook classic toys from eBay or shops that specialize in collectors items.
Our editor’s sons love getting classic Star Wars toys and Harry Potter LEGO sets. Yes, they are plastic, but secondhand means you’re not generating new waste. LEGO is working toward sustainability with plant-based bricks and more paper bags.
And, of course, anything that encourages your child’s love of learning, reading, or stimulates their curiosity is a great gift.
Cool Pool Table
The well-crafted wooden set works just like its grown-up counterpart, as kids use the cues to shoot balls into the holes. It can be played on a table or on the floor, alone or with friends—and it includes a solid removable bumper to increase or decrease the difficulty level.
Outdoor Ring Toss Game
Encourage outdoor time and a little healthy competition with a huge ring toss game.
Handmade and the parts separate for easy storage. The scoring numbers are wood-burnt, so they won’t fade in the sun or over time. It also comes with a draw string bag which makes it easy to take with your family to the park, beach, camping, or anywhere.
Wooden Bracelet Making Kit
Oak & Ever offers tons of open-ended play items. Containing enough beads to make 10 bracelets, a selection of wildflower beads await. A selection of brightly colored spacer beads complement the showpiece beads for the ultimate in flowery accessories.
Paddle Volley Ball Game
Want a great eco friendly gift for big kids that keeps them off a screen and guarantees social interaction? Find something that involves two players like this wooden volley shot game.
It’s borderline addicting and so much fun. Also encourages hand-eye coordination, patience, and concentration.
Handbook of Forgotten Skills
If you want to teach your child practical life skills but need a little help, this book is for you. Detailed illustrations show how to do things like tie a proper knot, use a compass, write a thank-you note, sew buttons, build a campfire, and more.
Life skills aren’t taught in many schools, so a book like this can serve as your own Self Sufficiency course at home. Add in some basic survival skills training and who knows? You might inspire more independence and confidence in your child.
3D Wooden Puzzles
These puzzle sets are made from safe, eco-friendly plywood. Your child can make six dinosaurs including T-Rex, Brontosaurus, Spinosaurus, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, and Parasaurolophus.
The edges of the plywood are grooved, so they’re safe for kids. Pieces fit right in, so no tools or glue are required to build.
Each puzzle comes with wooden punch out sheets and easy to follow assembly instructions.
Eco-Friendly DIY Bug Hotel
Attract bees, butterflies, ladybugs, and other insects to your garden. They’ll be nice and welcome in their own little hotel made from eco-friendly materials.
This DIY project is great for your young nature lover. The local pollinators (plus your plants) will thank you!
Wooden Labyrinth Game
The classic labyrinth game has challenged players of all ages since it was introduced in 1946. The natural wood and challenging aspects of the labyrinth game tops our list of eco-friendly gifts for kids.
The labyrinth game develops motor skills, concentration, perception, reasoning and – most of all – patience!
Giant Dance Piano Mat
The Green Child team kids love instruments and musical toys. The FAO Schwarz Giant Dance-On Piano Mat is a great gift for big kids. And it’s more affordable than you might think. This version from Target is only $39.
Gravitrax STEM Marble Run
A great STEM gift idea for kids. They can experiment with gravity, magnetism, and simple physics to get their marble to the finish line, all through hands-on building.
Works with or without screen integration via their app.
Refractor Telescope from Celestron
Every curious kid needs access to a telescope and a wide open space to view the night sky. Celestron’s 21061 AstroMaster is a great option for beginners.
Check out some of the amazing photos users have taken with just their camera phones through the telescope lens in the review section at Amazon.
Mini Acoustic Guitar for Children and Beginners
This 3-string guitar is real wood, and is a real guitar. This award winning design is approved by educators, and the guitar is shipped assembled and ready to play. Children can use the included flashcards, or the iOS/Android app to learn to play.
Handcrafted Boomerang
At a super affordable price, this makes the list of active eco-friendly gifts for kids. It also inspires time spent in nature!
This handmade wooden boomerang actually comes back to you. Big kids and even adults will love it.
Great Eco-Friendly Toy Shops
If you need more options, some of the brands above have full shops where you can dig a little deeper for the perfect items. And here are some great green shops that offer safe toys for kids. Plus you’ll feel good about supporting a small business.
- Bella Luna Toys is a beautiful place to purchase quality, natural-material gifts for the children on your list. The toys are inspired by Waldorf education, and invite open-ended play that nurtures a child’s imagination. Bella Luna is “committed to offering unique natural toys and products for children and families that are safe, healthy and encourage imaginative play. You will find no battery-operated or plastic toys here, the kind that will be played with for a short time before ending up in a landfill.”
- Oak and Ever offers loads of creative, mostly wooden, open ended play toys. We always find something fun for the kids (and creative for ourselves) at their shop. And if you need inspiration on what you can create, check out their Instagram.
- Green Kid Crafts encourages STEAM and other curiosity-developing qualities with their nature-based subscription boxes. You can choose by age or by interest and get an engaging box of crafts for your child. Mother and environmental scientist Penny Bauder created Green Kid Crafts in 2010 to help children exercise creativity, develop a love of discovery, and learn about the world around them.
- Lalo makes sustainable baby and child gear. They have added streamlined, adorable, and affordable toys to their shop over the last few years.
- A Toy Garden is another lovely source of natural children’s toys.
- Family Pastimes designs and manufactures cooperative games (all made in Canada).
If you need some help choosing what types of eco-friendly toys are suitable, check out this article on how to choose age-appropriate toys.
And learn more about why battery-free toys are better for young children.
