If you’re looking for the best gifts for 4-year-olds with the holidays coming up, have we got you covered! Look no further than our Ultimate Kids Birthday Gift Guide, offering hundreds of the best birthday and holiday gifts this year all sorted by age — including 20 favorite gifts for 4-year-old boys and 4-year-old girls.
Here, just a few of our favorites from the list, whatever your budget.
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Best Birthday Gifts for 4-Year-Olds: Some of Our Faves
This Sweet Elsa “Frozen” Sparkle Accessories Kit
($45, Super Smalls)
The sister sheroes of Frozen are enchanting a new generation and the Super Smalls x Disney collab offers this wonderful Disney Frozen Elsa Icy Sparkle Accessories Kit for kids 4 and up. The faux jewelry set includes twinkling snowflake clip-on earrings, sparkling bracelets, and a snowflake ring that can be worn any season at all.
Related: Our guide to the coolest gifts for 6-year-olds
A cool kids’ tee that supports their interests
($11 on sale, GAP)
If your kid can’t stop asking about the 2024 eclipse, this graphic t-shirt from GAP may be the coolest gift they get this year. And so affordable! Also see themes like tech, gaming, dinosaurs, skateboarding, music, and lots of sports.
Related: 50 of the best gifts for kids under $15 that don’t feel like stocking stuffers
Functional Ballet Shoes in Colors Beyond Pink
($48, Slipps)
From our newest sponsor Slipps, we love these adorable, vibrantly colored ballet shoes for kids for babies through kids wearing size 10. They’re thoughtfully designed to protect and support growing feet compared with traditional ballet shoes and come in wonderful colors including basic pink and black. They’re made of genuine leather with easy Velcro elastic cross-straps and even a foam insert for arch support.
Eco-Friendly Toy Airplanes
($9.96 on sale, on Amazon, with a limited-time 15% off coupon)
Ready for takeoff? Take advantage of the incredible prices on toys made from recycled milk jugs from Green Toys, one of the original eco-toy companies. If you hurry, you can grab their popular 17-piece play tea set for under $15 too!
Osmo Little Genius Starter Kit for iPad or Fire Tablet
($51 on sale at Amazon)
One of our absolute favorite gifts hails from Osmo, one of the first companies to understand that STEM-loving kids could take what’s fun about on-screen tablet play, and bring all the learning offline. This starter set helps kids up to about 5 develop creativity, imagination, empathy, and measurable skills like phonics, letter recognition, spatial reasoning, and early drawing ability.
Related: Our guide to the coolest gifts for 5-year-olds
Tabletop Drawing Roll and Dispenser
($17.99 on sale at Amazon)
One of the best gifts for a 4-year-old? Preschoolers can’t have too many crafting kits and art supplies, and this tabletop drawing roll and dispenser from Melissa & Doug is such a cool way to set up a coloring station for a budding young artist. Easy clean-up and great price too. Just add a set of sparkly watercolor gel crayons!
Kids PJ Set in their Favorite Pattern
($26 and up on sale, Hanna Andersson)
For years, Hanna Andersson pajama sets for kids have been our go-to, if you want high-quality, extremely durable sleepwear that lasts so long, we’ve passed ours down to at least 4 more kids…and counting! Find patterns on sale that make great gifts for 4-year-olds including dinosaurs, rainbows, sharks, vintage cars…even Bluey!
Swedish Wall Wooden Climbing Set
($79 on sale — 50% off for a limited time! — Goodevas Kids on Etsy)
This best-selling Etsy maker gets raves for their Montessori-style modular climbing sets. This one can be customized to include rings, a trapeze, or a drawing table, making this a generous gift and a practical way to help them get all that preschooler energy out without breaking things!
Magnetic Travel Play Sets
($13.75 and up from Mudpuppy on Amazon)
We love all the affordable magnetic play set from Mudpuppy that are perfect for long road trips or just some screen-free play. Check out themes from space to dress-up themes, to magnetic pixel art that they can take apart and put back together.
See The Rest of Our Favorite Gifts for 4-Year-Olds
For all 20 of our favorite gifts for 4-year-old boys and girls this year, see our Ultimate Kids Gift Guide. And be sure to check our guides to the coolest gifts for 5-year-olds and the coolest gifts for 6-year-olds that have even more terrific ideas that could be perfect for your own 4-year-old.
I’d love to see some more wholesome ways to engage children. How about getting them into the kitchen to explore real food? I wrote a children’s vegetable cookbook with 15 pre-reader recipes. I include lots of fun facts, and address seasoning and textural changes kids can explore…all to help them grow strong and observant. I’d love to see you do a best cookbooks list for the holidays.
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Ed Response: Hi Heidi! While we disagree with the suggestion that it’s not “wholesome” to encourage imaginative play, art, creativity, and the pursuit of passions like dance and STEM outside the home, we love the idea of getting kids in the kitchen! In fact, we’ve been suggesting that very thing for the last 15 years.
Here’s a helpful guide to getting kids into the kitchen, and skills they can learn by age.
Here’s a recent post on an educational cooking kit subscription for kids
Here are more subscription gifts for kids including baking kits, STEM kits, maker projects, and book subscriptions.
Here’s a list of wonderful kitchen projects to do with young kids when you’re stuck indoors.
Here are helpful tips to get kids making their own lunches starting in preschool
Here’s one of the many kids’ cookbooks we have recommended over the years
Here’s one of our many gift guides specifically for kids who love to cook.
Your book sounds like a lovely idea and fits right in with our years of recommendations. Feel free to email our editors so we can take a look.