Stocking Stuffer Ideas for the Entire Family (Gift Guide)

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In This Post

I first wrote this post in December 2014, twelve days before Christmas, half done with my shopping and mildly panicking. Back then I had two little girls and a husband with a beard he was way too proud of. Now I’m filling four stockings plus his, and after more than ten Christmases of doing this, I know exactly what makes a good stocking stuffer and what ends up in the donate pile by February.

So I’ve rewritten this post with my current list: 20 stocking stuffer ideas for kids and dad that actually get used. Every single one fits in a stocking, and most are under $15.

How I pick stocking stuffers

Three rules, learned the hard way:

It has to survive past New Year’s. Cheap trinkets that break on Christmas morning aren’t a deal, they’re clutter with a bow on it.
At least a few things need to work in the car. We drive to see family every Christmas, and a stocking that doubles as a road trip kit is a stocking that earns its keep.
Not all candy. One or two treats, yes. But a stocking full of sugar means a Christmas afternoon I’m not eager to repeat.

Fidget and sensory stocking stuffers for kids

Fidgets are the single highest hit rate category in our house. The transformable fidget spinners come nine to a pack, which matters when you have four kids and zero interest in refereeing who got which one. The sensory rings come twelve to a pack for the same reason. Pop tubes look like nothing and get played with constantly — the connect-and-build kind keeps my kids busy way longer than I expect every time, and the light-up glow stick version has carried us through more than one evening drive home.

The magnetic fidget rings are technically for anxiety relief, but in practice they’re the one thing in this list that gets stolen off the counter by an adult. More on that in the dad section.

Art supplies that fit in a stocking

Art supplies are the safest stocking stuffer there is, because you’re replacing things they already use. Rainbow pencils (each one writes in shifting colors), the little 4-in-1 multicolor pens that come 20 to a pack, and Crayola Mini Twistables — 50 crayons, no peeling paper, no broken tips. Wikki Stix are the sleeper pick: reusable wax sticks that bend into shapes, make zero mess, and have saved us on airplanes more than once.

Two slightly bigger picks that still fit in a stocking: the magnetic drawing boards (a two-pack, so both car seats are covered) and the Plant-A-Pet puppy kit, which is the “one special thing” in my youngest’s stocking this year.

Quiet-time and travel stocking stuffers

This is the category I lean on hardest as the kids get older. A six-deck set of classic card games — Go Fish, Old Maid, Crazy Eights, Memory Match, Slap Jack, War — covers every age in my house at once. The knock-knock joke book has over 250 jokes, which means you will hear all 250 of them by December 27th, and honestly it’s worth it. The wombat facts book (yes, wombat poop is actually cube shaped) is the one my kids read out loud at the dinner table to stump their dad.

For getting energy out after all the sitting: parachute men to launch off the deck, a foam airplane, and a snail-shaped kids tape measure that sounds odd until you watch a five-year-old measure every single object in your living room for an hour.

The extras that fill the toe

Every stocking needs a few small things for the bottom. Ours get Bluey fruit snacks (22 pouches, they last us into January), the Lip Smacker Coca-Cola balm 8-pack that my girls trade like currency, and bath suction toys for the little ones — the connect-and-build kind that stick to the tub wall.

Stocking stuffers for dad

A story from the original version of this post that I refuse to delete. In 2012, I drilled the “your gift has to be thoughtful, I don’t care about the price” mantra into Ryan’s head. That year he handed me a package of men’s white Hanes t-shirts, which I opened in front of his entire family. Everyone thought I’d opened the wrong gift. “Seng always wears my white undershirts to sleep,” he announced to the room. I turned red. He was right, and it’s still one of my favorite gifts he’s given me.

The beard in question, photographed secretly from my phone in 2014, because pulling out a real camera would have tipped him off:

Dad's multi-colored beard - the original stocking stuffer target from 2014

The thoughtful-not-expensive rule still runs his stocking today. From this list, the magnetic fidget rings and the wombat facts book are the two that work for dads — one keeps his hands busy during conference calls, the other arms him with comebacks for the dinner table trivia wars the kids started.

A little history

The original 2014 version of this post was about scarves, and it included my girls turning said scarves into a full “Let It Go” performance in the living room. Keeping this photo forever: