37 Best Toys for 6-Year-Olds (original) (raw)
The Only Gift Guide for a 6-Year-Old You’ll Ever Need
By ,a senior writer at the Strategist covering kids’ toys and men’s style. She joined the Strategist in 2019. She is a former writer for GQ and an accomplished illustrator.
Photo-Illustration: Photo-Illustration: Stevie Remsberg; Photos: Courtesy of the retailers
Six is the age when children typically enter first grade and, as play therapist Joseph Sacks notes, face a huge transition from a mostly play-based atmosphere to a much more work-based one. In other words, there’s less coloring and more reading and math. Because of this major life moment, 6-year-olds need space to play without constraint or the pressure of a fixed outcome. Abby Kerlin, program director of general education at the Bank Street Graduate School of Education, puts it this way: “What we remember most from our own childhoods is the play experience when we were allowed to leave our pillow fort up for a few days and it became an animal hospital, a rocket ship, and a bunker.” Not only is this kind of play more memorable, she says, but it supports creative problem solving and other important brain functions.
To help you turn her advice into a gift that the 6-year-old in your life will covet, we asked child development experts, veteran toy buyers, elementary-school teachers, discerning parents, and toy-trend forecasters to recommend the best toys for 6-year-olds. We grouped their suggestions by price, so if you have a dollar range in mind, you can use the table of contents to jump directly to that section — or read all the way through to get the full picture of what 6-year-olds are into these days.
Meanwhile, if you’re also shopping for kids in other age groups, we have gift guides for 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds, 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds, 8-year-olds, 9-year-olds, 10-year-olds, 11-year-olds, and 12-year-olds — plus the meticulously curated Strategist Toy Store, filled with all our greatest hits.
Updated September 19, 2025
Our gift favorites have been updated with the latest pricing and availability. And a great deal of note: Ja-Ru Flarp! Noise Putty is over 70 percent off now.
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At this age, stickers of all types are often just as exciting as any other toy — and less expensive. According to Maria Dueñas Jacobs, founder of Super Smalls and a mom of three, they offer a mess-free way for kids to explore their creativity. This variety pack of different-size googly eyes can be used for craft projects or to decorate everything from a bike helmet to school supplies.
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Milk Teeth co-founder Catherine Newell-Hanson’s daughter was given this monster-themed bingo game as a 6th-birthday gift from a classmate, and the whole family has enjoyed it so much that they have been playing it constantly. “It’s been a quick transition from my daughter simply using the pictures to find a match to being able to read the character’s names aloud, and the goofy monster characters are delightful,” says Newell-Hanson.
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Lori Caplan-Colon, a speech-language pathologist at Monclair Speech Therapy, recommends this coloring book with a twist as a much-needed creative outlet for 6-year-olds. “All coloring books are great, but there’s something special about scratching off the pages with the wooden stylus and revealing these glittery foils,” she says.
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For creating interesting drawings outside the bounds of a coloring book, but with the guidance of a nifty tool, I suggest this classic Spirograph drawing set. Inside the box you’ll find a set of plastic notched wheels and rings that, when combined with markers, pens, or colored pencils, create precise spiral geometric designs. It’s a great toy for kids who like drawing but don’t feel super-confident in their skills. And the sensory experience is just as mesmerizing as the resulting artwork.
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From the outset, this wooden math game might seem a lot like work, but it is actually hilariously fun and even a little bit thrilling. To win, players have to lay down all of their ten tiles by matching numbers to the roll of their dice. I’ve played it many times, including with my then-6-year-old niece and 11-year-old nephew, and the tension builds as everyone races to finish first. According to Caitlin Meister, founder of the Greer Meister Group, a private-tutoring and educational-consulting practice in Brooklyn, it helps kids practice simple math like adding and subtracting but it also teaches grouping. “If I roll a two and a four, I can add them to get six, or I can subtract them to get two. So it’s teaching kids to notice different combinations with numbers,” she says.
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Also on the delightful-monster front: If your favorite 6-year-old is a budding Pokémon stan, they’ll love getting more cards to add to their collection. Pair a few packs with a card binder for a gift with extra oomph.
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I originally bought this game for my niece and nephew, and it was an instant hit. To play, kids flip cards from the deck onto a central pile while looking out for “slamwiches” (two identical cards with a third in between) and “double deckers” (two identical cards back-to-back), as well as cards adorned with “sandwich thieves” and “munchers” that require you to turn over more cards. Whenever a slamwich, double decker, or thief appears, whoever slaps the pile fastest takes all the cards, and the first player to collect the whole deck wins. Strategist senior editor Jen Trolio says it’s a good game to keep stashed at the grandparents’ house and fun for families to all play together.
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Mudpuppy puzzles are a favorite of multiple Strategist parents — we included their simpler mini-puzzles in our guides to the best kids’ stocking stuffers and the best toys for 3-year-olds. This larger, more complex puzzle from the brand is like two toys in one: Once they’ve put all of the 64 pieces together, kids can test their observational skills by searching, Where’s Waldo style, for over 40 different pups at the park. This puzzle also comes in African Safari, Ocean Life, Rainforest, and a handful of other designs, and for especially avid puzzlers, the brand makes 500-piece search-and-find puzzles that would be great for the whole family to help with.
Playmobil’s Color series lets kids take a turn at designing their own toys, in a sense. The sets below come with fine-tipped Crayola washable markers to color in areas on each Playmobil figure’s clothing and accessories that have been left blank. When kids tire of their handiwork, they can wash it off and start over again. In addition to the motorbike, fashion-designer, and skate-park sets I’ve included here, there is also a dog salon and a backstage dressing room.
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For kids who prefer Barbies, there are literally thousands of variations and styles to choose from. Depending on what your giftee is into, you might choose a color-changing Barbie mermaid, a boxer Barbie, a babysitting Skipper, or even a Barbie version of tennis great Billie Jean King. The Barbie mermaids were a favorite of Trolio’s daughters, who have played with them at their community swimming pool and regularly brought them into the bath around age 6. But no matter which doll you pick, they will all fit into one another’s clothing and each of the different Barbie Dreamhouses and play sets.
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This colorful kinetic sand set comes with more than ten tools and molds, plus two pounds of colored sand, so playing with it is very satisfying and hands-on. It’s also a toy that doesn’t do just one thing, which Lizzie Assa, a play expert and founder of the Workspace for Children, says is one of the hallmarks of great open-ended toys. Fill the sand swirler and watch the colors mix, then layer your creations, squish them, and slice them to reveal surprising new designs.
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“I think a lot of parents feel pressure that their kids need to be sitting in a quiet room playing with wooden blocks or their play isn’t valuable. I think there’s a lot of that on the internet, and that’s not really true,” Assa says. With that in mind, even a can of goo that farts can be considered developmentally valuable if it’s engaging for kids. Sacks recommends Flarp, a putty toy he says they’ll spend 45 minutes playing with. Flarp engages kids’ tactile sensations, plus it’s cool and slimy and gross.
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This Rainbow Loom Mega Set has everything kids need for making friendship bracelets out of tiny rubber bands, including alphabet beads and cute charms to personalize their creations. Trolio says her daughters first learned to make the bracelets on their fingers when they were around 4 years old; now, at 10 and 7, they like using this loom because it lets them try more advanced techniques. “The whole elementary school wears these by the armful,” Trolio says, adding that the loom and tools can also make it easier for younger or less dextrous kids to work with the rubber bands.
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Washi tape is an affordable gift that’ll encourage creativity without messing up your walls. It has almost infinite uses from decorating notebooks and crafts to making DIY wallpaper for a dollhouse living room. Trolio, who recommends buying a big assortment of patterns, says her kids go through a ton of it.
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This is a really cool toy, even if you and your kids haven’t seen the new How to Train Your Dragon movie. It’s a little hard to tell from the photo, but it’s a three-dimensional dragon mask with an articulated jaw, water atomizer that shoots mist out of the mouth, and eyes that you can see through surprisingly well. I tested one in the Strategist office and was impressed by how “real” it looks and how much fun it is to wear, even though it was definitely small on my adult-size head. With Halloween getting closer by the day, there’s a lot of costume potential, too.
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Strategist senior writer Lauren Ro has a 6-year-old baseball obsessive for whom this tabletop game is a very fun approximation of the real thing. It’s designed for two players (though more can get in on the action if you take turns) and comes with several metal balls and little figurines that stand at various positions on the field. One player uses a lever to “pitch” the ball, and the opponent “bats” at it with a spring-loaded bat from home base.There are hidden contraptions and magnets that players can manipulate to make the ball’s path more unpredictable. Depending on where the ball ends up, the runner advances to the next base or gets an out (or a strike, foul ball, etc.). There are little pegs you can move to indicate strikes, runs, and so on. “It’s a very clever, well-made game,” Ro says.
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This glamorous costume jewelry set comes recommended by two of the experts we spoke to about the best dress-up costumes: Natalie Ebel, co-founder of Backdrop, and Jocelyn Greene, founder of Child’s Play NY. The brand’s necklaces and headbands are among Ebel’s (and her daughter’s) favorite accessories.
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Strategist contributor Youngna Park pointed me toward this pair of kid-friendly binoculars that her then 6- and 8-year-old children enjoyed taking on nature walks. While she says they are easy to use and work well, she also mentioned that the kids like them as much as a fashion statement as an actual bird- and squirrel-watching tool.
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Meister recommends this set of climbing holds as a perfect antidote to screen time that gets kids outside. Attach them to any tree in your yard with tension bands to create your very own climbing wall.
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Kids this age “love to create, and we should be building on that,” Golinkoff explains. This kit comes with all kinds of rainbow-colored felt, beads, pipe cleaners, and beyond — all in a handy carrying case. Both the brand and this set in particular were recommended by the parents and educators we spoke to about the best art supplies for kids.
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Roller skates are a classic way to get exercise and enjoy the outdoors — or, if you have one nearby, an old-school roller rink. This pair from FireStar is “supercool and retro in eye-popping colors,” says Jennifer Cattaui, owner of New York City kids’ shop Babesta. But they’re more than just good-looking; parents will appreciate being able to tighten the wheels, keeping the skates on the slower side until their kid has them mastered.
This is a great age for kids to start working on more involved LEGO builds. And because they come with bigger, more doll-like figures, LEGO Friends sets make an excellent gift for 6-year-olds who enjoy building elaborate pretend worlds for their dolls to live in. More than any other LEGO universe, Friends sets are designed to be played with long after kids have finished each build and touch on popular elementary-school themes like taking care of animals, shopping for clothes and snacks, going to the beach, and having fun with classmates. The below sets — a cat treehouse birthday party, a 2025 Advent calendar, and a candy store — are all rated for ages 6 and up.
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Point-and-shoot cameras are increasingly popular among teens and young adults who like the vintage appeal and freedom from phones that come along with the portable devices. For kids who may not be ready for a Polaroid or Fujifilm Instax camera, the Kidizoom from VTech is a nice alternative. The digital camera has six modes: photo, panorama, selfie, game, voice recorder, and talking photos, which you can make by combining a still photo and a voice recording. It also comes with dozens of effects and templates like photo frames, stamps, collages, and video themes.
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You hardly ever see the elegant simplicity of this set of wooden pieces in the STEM-related toys of the moment. Perhaps that’s why it’s a familiar sight in “maker spaces” at elementary schools all over the country: It challenges young builders to create everything from a marble run to a geometric tower using nothing more than identically sized slabs.
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The imposing height of this realistic stuffed giraffe means it can double as furniture, adding a nice pop of color to the corner of a room or serving as a makeshift coat rack. Compared to floppier giant stuffies, this one, a classic from Melissa & Doug, is relatively solid in texture but still soft enough to cuddle or hug.
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Because of their ultralight wheels that won’t damage walls or knock things over, Monster Jam remote-control cars are excellent for young kids. In addition to this Spider-Man truck, the brand also makes a purple-and-green giant Grave Digger truck and an El Toro Loco truck with an atomizer that shoots a dramatic puff of smoke out of its “nose.”
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I love toys that double as stylish room décor (and stuffed-animal storage too), which is why I was immediately drawn to this wooden puppet theater when I saw it in person. It’s full of fun details that make kid-created dramatic performances feel like the real thing: The fabric curtains open and close with ties. There’s a chalkboard marquee on one side where kids can announce their next show and a cutout ticket window on the other.
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If you have the space for it — it’s almost four feet tall and a sprawling five feet wide when assembled — this three-story Barbie Dreamhouse (a Trolio recommendation) is a great gift. The 360-degree open-plan layout means multiple Barbie fans can play with multiple Barbies simultaneously. And the spacious rooms and giant slide allow for tons of group get-togethers including pool parties, sleepovers, outfit try-ons, brunches, movie nights, and more. It comes with a real working elevator and over 75 accessories too.
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Again, if you have the space for it, a geometric jungle gym is a great investment. According to child psychologist Dr. Nicole Beurkens, who we spoke to about the best outdoor toys, the dome encourages the kind of rough-and-tumble play that lots of kids don’t get enough of these days. Kids love climbing the powder-coated steel bars and swinging from them — often upside down. But it can also function as a fort or secret clubhouse by covering it with a tarp or large blanket.
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Newell-Hanson’s daughter got her first American Girl doll at 6 years oldafter attending a friend’s birthday party at the Los Angeles store. She chose a Truly Me Doll with extra-long blue-and-purple hair. The doll has been a huge hit ever since, though Newell-Hanson advises picking one with a shorter ’do that won’t tangle as easily and spending an extra $10 on the American Girl doll hairbrush, too.
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How to choose a scooter from all the scooters? The Micro Kickboard brand is an overwhelming favorite among the parents and numerous other experts we’ve talked to. This stable three-wheeled scooter is available in a Micro size for ages 2 through 5, but Trolio recommends the Maxi, which has handlebars that adjust higher for older kids and will easily last them through most of elementary school.
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