An inexpensive gift that will give you and your child hours of fun is a paper airplane book.  We bought ours on Amazon, and I believe the shipping was more than the book!  The title of the book is KIDS’ Paper Airplane Book by Ken Blackburn and Jeff Lammers.  Both are engineers and wonderful designers of great flying paper airplanes.  The book is colorful and creative.  This was money well spent!  A class of third grade boys and girls could not get enough of it.  They were truly fascinated.  One of my co-workers, who had taught for 35 years, used to have a telescope set up on the front porch of his classroom in the morning for early arrivals.  It was neat to see the latest astrological event through his high-end telescope. (It was his Teacher of the Year prize for his classroom).  If your child/student is interested in space, consider a telescope for Christmas.  Perplexus is a maze game in a transparent plastic ball that will challenge your child/student.  We call this one the “try, try, try” game.  It will teach you about perseverance while trying to get the metal marble to the end and avoiding many challenging obstacles.  Additionally, I have listed on earlier blogs and on the Curriculum Guide page, a variety of wonderful books for kids.