The Best Gifts for Imaginative Play and Make Believe
Kids love to play make-believe — like inventing their own creations, meeting mystical creatures or navigating to the furthest reaches of our universe.
Fortunately, you don’t need to travel nearly that far to find gifts that nourish your child’s love of imaginative play. Nurture kids’ natural inclination to dream with gifts that let them explore, create and be themselves.
Unicorn Gifts for Kids
Indulge your child’s love of mythical creatures with unicorn gifts that also promote creativity and self-expression.
Make Your Own Gem Art Unicorn
Unicorn lovers unite for the best unicorn gift ever! This keepsake kit blends hands-on art with imaginative play to make an excellent screen-free gift. Creative kids will love bedazzling brilliant unicorn scenes with sparkling gems, before trying their hands at unicorn-themed doodling, Hidden Pictures puzzles and more.
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Unicorn Surprise Book
This interactive lift-the-flaps book for babies and toddlers is perfect for the youngest unicorn fans. The soft felt flaps, surprise mirror and lovable “funny-corn” characters invite little ones to explore, discover and share special moments with their grown-ups. Best of all, they’ll build an early love of books that will last a lifetime.
Hidden Pictures Faces: Unicorns & Rainbows
Encourage hours of pretend play with this seek-and-find sticker book full of unicorn and rainbow fun. Kids can unleash their creativity as they use repositionable stickers to create silly and imaginative faces for fantastical friends. But the fun is just the beginning: The stickers help little unicorn lovers practice fine-motor skills, and the accompanying Hidden Pictures puzzles promote problem-solving and other skills needed for school.
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Magical Gifts for Kids
Encourage your child to dream big as they create magical moments with mystical creatures in make-believe lands.
Magical Woodland Hidden Pictures Deluxe
Let your child create and explore alongside magical friends like gnomes, fairies, dragons and more. Filled with recipes, crafts, stickers, puzzles and hundreds of hidden objects, this deluxe activity book encourages kids to flex critical thinking skills while letting their imaginations run wild. Kids can even take their magical experiences off the page with a cut-and-color mushroom fairy village craft to create themselves.
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Fairy Glitter Hidden Pictures
Everything is better with (mess-free) glitter! Kids’ creativity will shine with these magical-themed Hidden Pictures puzzles, ready-to-color stickers, and sparkly glitter markers. Filled with fairies, mermaids and unicorns, this book satisfies your child’s love for fantasy while also giving them loads of challenging Hidden Pictures scenes to search and decorate. It’s a coloring book and puzzle book in one!
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Magical Mermaids Hidden Pictures
It’s mermaid magic kids can take anywhere! This splash-tacular set of puzzles, color-yourself stickers and metallic markers is self-contained, compact and perfect for engaging kids without screens for hours at a time. Young puzzlers can search for hidden objects in bustling reefs, undersea markets and silly mer‑meetups. Then, they can personalize each Hidden Pictures scene with customizable stickers and bright bursts of shimmering color.
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Mega Super Cute Hidden Pictures Puzzles
Get ready for cuteness overload! This big book of Hidden Pictures puzzles features the most adorable narwhals, “foodimals” and other creatures you’ve ever seen. Taco cats, bunny ice creams and more cute critters appear in both classic and Super Challenge seek-and-find scenes, making these puzzles the perfect all-ages gifts for imaginative play.
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Space Gifts for Kids
Keep intergalactic interests engaged for light years with gifts that help build brain power and encourage pretend play.
Why, How and Wow! Space Book
Aspiring astronauts will love getting answers to alllll the questions they’re asking — and a few they didn’t know they had. Plus, every fact is vetted by real NASA experts! This collection of space trivia, photographs and information, along with some well-timed humor, will keep kids entertained, curious and inspired to dream about how make-believe play can turn real someday.
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Space Hidden Pictures Puzzles to Highlight
This unique, travel-sized collection of space-themed puzzles is created totally in black and white. Kids can use the included neon blue highlighter to mark the hidden objects and create cool cosmic scenes. Silly images of spaceship repair crews and flying saucer tea parties will keep kids giggling as they solve puzzles and sharpen school skills like critical thinking and attention to detail.
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Hidden Pictures Space Puffy Sticker Playscenes
Kids can solve the out-of-this-world Hidden Pictures puzzles and other interstellar-themed activities in this book, then supercharge their space play by decorating with puffy stickers! More than 50 repositionable stickers are included, letting kids create their own extraterrestrial adventures around their completed puzzles. Add an astro cat to the family spaceship or an alien friend to a party on the moon. The stars are the limit for these imaginative and confidence-building playscenes!
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DIY Gifts for Kids
Encourage your kid to craft, write, cook and create with DIY gifts that inspire innovation and imagination.
Neon Crafts Kit
With no prep and all play, this collection of 20 neon-injected craft projects contains everything you need, from instructions to supplies. Materials like stickers, yarn, patterned paper and wiggle eyes guide kids in making fun and funny creatures like pom-pom pets, miniature gnomes, fuzzy-stick friends and more. As kids create, they’ll be inspired to show off their creative independence, dreaming up their own make-believe characters and stories.
No-Sew Snack Pals Craft Kit
This self-contained kit is the perfect way to give your kids soft, squishy and deliciously fun gifts for imaginative play. They’ll get all the materials necessary to craft three customizable food plushies: a cookie, a toaster pastry and a slice of pie. The pre-cut, no-sew pieces are designed for beginners, helping kids build confidence as they craft, squeeze and play with these generously sized stuffed toys. Silly bonus quizzes help kids dive deep into pretend play about cooking, fantasy and more.
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The Ultimate Science Cookbook
What lets you build edible science experiments, play with your food and then eat a delicious snack? The Best. Kids. Cookbook. Ever. This STEM-inspired recipe and activity book shows kids how to turn their kitchen into a science lab, as it guides them through recipes for everything from edible volcanoes to marshmallow meteorites to working vegetable race cars. Many recipes are open-ended, allowing kids to investigate, test and invent their own tasty creations.
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The Ultimate Collection of Fun Stuff For Kids
Jam-packed with inspiration, this 4-book set includes writing prompts, scavenger hunts and hundreds of other ways to get kids thinking, creating and doing. Idea starters are categorized by topic: writing, drawing, indoor play and outdoor adventures. As kids experiment with building obstacle courses, making invisible ink and designing a robot, they’ll unlock their imaginations, find new interests and grow into their best selves.
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How to Draw Hidden Pictures
Calling all young artists! This activity book and interactive guide from longtime Highlights illustrator Jannie Ho shows kids how to draw adorable characters — and then turn their drawings into actual Hidden Pictures scenes! Puzzles, how-tos and practice space help build confidence, inspire out-of-the-box thinking and spark ideas so kids can create their own imaginative stories, comics and graphic novels.
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Interactive Puzzle Gifts for Kids
Power up your child’s puzzle play with hands-on bonus activities that take creativity off the page and into the land of imagination.
Neon Super Cute Puzzle and Play
This gift is for kids who dream of bringing their favorite stories and activities to life. Pretend play becomes reality as kids complete the Hidden Pictures puzzles in this activity book, and then use the included Plus-Plus building pieces and neon stickers to assemble characters and scenes in three dimensions. It’s a gift that boosts independent play, focus and creativity through fun.
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Super Sweet Hidden Pictures
Kids who love confections and treats will be enchanted with this imaginative take on Hidden Pictures puzzles. Every activity features bakeries, candy shops and other yummy themes. Color-it-yourself stickers help kids complete each scene and make it their own. The sweetest parts of this set? Six colorful, deliciously scented markers that bring these puzzle scenes to life not only visually, but also aromatically.
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Sweet Surprises Puzzles & Slime
Hidden Pictures scenes come alive in the imagination — AND to the senses of touch and smell — in this multifaceted exploratory kit for kids. This special set blends treat-themed seek-and-find puzzles with Crazy Aaron’s award-winning watermelon scented slime, making it a feast for the brain, hands and nose. The fun keeps going with adorably sweet slime mix-ins. When you search for the hidden mix-in characters, the slime becomes a live-action Hidden Pictures game of its own!
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brainPLAY Top Secret Spy Puzzles and Codes Kit
Mission: Irresistible! Your kid’s dream of spy tactics and secret passwords becomes reality with this ultra-challenging kit full of puzzles, codes and brainteasers. First, kids solve Hidden Pictures scenes using red-reveal glasses. Next, they write secret messages with a UV light pen. Finally, they use sleuthy stickers to help complete puzzle clues and more. It’s the perfect way to encourage pretend play while also building essential skills for school and beyond.
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Make-believe and imaginative play are natural, age-appropriate ways for kids to have fun and learn about the world around them. More importantly, they help kids develop essential social-emotional and academic skills they’ll use later in life.
When you encourage your child to engage in pretend play, you not only feed their imagination and creativity. You also arm them with the communication, self-regulation and problem-solving skills they need to confidently progress through their years at school, and beyond.
