Inspiring Art Gifts for Kids

These markers fit perfectly in little hands and will provide your art lover with hours of fun. They are washable, nontoxic, and come with a bonus activity book to help your child learn about letters and numbers. Real teacher review: “As a teacher, I’m always on the lookout for quality, not-too-expensive school supplies and all kinds of things for crafts. Let’s just say this was a bingo! The students love it, and they get to use it as a reward. Glad I got it since it does motivate them to treat it with respect.”

This helpful book is full of easy-to-follow projects that will allow your kids to get their creative juices flowing without making a huge mess. Added bonus: Many of the projects use things you already have lying around the house! Real teacher review: “This book is amazing. I’m having lots of fun digging into it with my 3-year-old and my young ESL students. The crafts really are low-mess. The pictures are beautiful, and the creations are fun.”

Shopping for the hard-to-shop-for tween or teen? If they love art, they’ll love this kit. Get them one kit, or purchase a subscription. ArtSnacks is a popular art subscription kit; this kids’ edition of the kit is a perfect gift for the artistically inclined. Each box includes seven full-size premium art supplies, a palette for paints, high-quality papers and a link to a 50-minute instructional video taught by the founder of the company, an artist herself.

Learning to draw recognizable animals will make your child feel empowered and satisfied. This is a great guide with lots of pictures and detailed instructions that will help improve their concentration skills and keep their mind occupied for hours. Real teacher review: “The easy-to-follow directions and step-by-step process made it easy for my first grade students to create their pictures.”

Grab some paper and let your kids create a masterpiece without worrying about staining a thing. These Crayola paints are nontoxic and come in squeezable bottles with flip-top caps to keep spills to a minimum. Real teacher review: “These are very good, vibrant finger paints. I am a preschool teacher, so I am well versed in finger paint. They are a good consistency (not too thick, not too runny), and they washed off of my students’ hands easily without staining.”

Propel your child’s passion to another dimension with these 3-D art kits. Using six double-sided markers (one tip for precision and one for painting), budding illustrators liven up an animal-filled forest or the portraits of some not-so-scary monsters with a brilliant palette of hues. Young artists then break the fourth wall by slipping on the set’s 3-D glasses and bringing their fantastical color-by-numbers masterpieces to life.

This rock-painting kit comes with standard and metallic paints, art transfers, googly eyes, gems, and much more. Rocks included! Real teacher review: “This was fun for my class. There are 10 small rocks, 12 paints, stickers, glitter glue, googly eyes, paintbrushes, a sponge, and gems in this kit … everything you need for 10 children to have craft time. They will have to share and take turns because there are only 2 paintbrushes and 1 sponge unless you have more somewhere.”

A string art kit is a great way to sharpen hand-eye coordination and let your kids get creative with a medium other than paint or markers. The canvases allow for easy hanging when they are done. Real teacher review: “My students love playing with these. I usually buy a few at the beginning of the school year, and they make great indoor recess projects, or I save them as a prize if we are running a reading contest.”

It seems so simple, but we are crazy about this watercolor set by OOLY. If you have a painter on your hands, this is the set to buy. My son uses these, I use these—they are high quality, give gorgeous colors and they last longer than other sets. There are so many more vibrant colors in this set than others and we also love how the lid turns into a perfect palette for mixing.

For the kid who wants to bring a little more excitement to their art! This build-build-your-own sketching machine is the kid who likes a sprinkling of engineering in their art. Fundamentally like an Etch-a-Sketch, this machine creates drawings of pixelated style. What’s different, however, is that it draws on paper, so every creation can be kept—no shaking to start over!

Kids will love no prob-llama learning the fun art of diamond painting. This kid-styled kit is for kids that revel in detail-oriented art. The skill learned with mosaic painting up a notch and this particular kit results in shimmering success upon completion.

“In addition to Crayola markers, I also like Mondo Llama for a little flair,” says Ebel about Target’s in-house line of arts-and-crafts supplies. She pointed to these glitter ones as a favorite because they add some oomph to any creative project. Their bullet-tip design ensures precision in application, allowing your young artist to add detailed touches to greeting cards, scrapbooks, drawings, or sketchbook pages. But it’s not just the sparkle that earns Ebel’s praise. She calls them the best glitter markers she and her 5-year-old have used — and they’ve tried a lot.

String art is a very cool technique that combines art and geometry to make incredible 3-dimensional works of art. While it looks complex on the surface, it really just takes pins, art, and a solid introduction to get started. Your child isn’t going to believe that something as simple as pins and strings can create such cool works of art, and this highly-rated kit demystifies the whole process. The accompanying book teaches three simple techniques—the scribble, the fan, and the zigzag—so kids can either follow the steps for the 15 projects included or make their very own.

Imagine your crayons being more fun broken and repurposed than they ever were new! That dream is a reality with the Crayola Crayon Melter. Crayons melt into a drawing pen and transform into a new way to create with heated melted wax! Kids can color and doodle with melted crayons on a variety of surfaces, creating both texture and allowing the vibrancy of crayons to make art on a variety of surfaces like wood, glass, pottery, and canvas.

Tze Chun, founder of UPRISE ART, recommends looking for art supplies that kids can open and close completely by themselves. Not only will this teach them independence (and keep supplies from drying out), Chun says it will also give them space to enjoy choosing colors and putting things back on their own time. Her top recommendation, Kwik Stix, is also a Strategist favorite and was mentioned by three other parents. The paint sticks “are a staple in our house and are great for younger and older kids alike,” Chun shares. Indeed, they are an ingenious solution for those who want the smooth application of paint without prolonged drying times and potential mess. Their kid-friendly design is a big plus: “Toddlers are still working on their fine motor skills, and the caps challenge them to fit the two parts together, but they don’t need a lot of strength to close them properly,” Chun explains. Kiwk Stix are also made with nontoxic materials, something Golding emphasized as a top priority when choosing what to buy for kids.

After all of those great holiday gifts, your little one is going to need to get a head start on their thank you cards—and this is just the toy to help them do that. This spin and splatter machine uses centrifugal force to create vibrant and unique works of art and has a protective cover to keep messes at bay while your kiddo gets wild creating.

They can dream about art, and then, when they wake up, they can make their vivid dreams a reality. Why buy a patterned pillowcase when your child can truly express themselves by making their own creation? This doodle pillowcase comes in five different designs: dinosaur, home decorator, space explorer, map, and original—which gives them a blank slate to truly create.

Kid Made Modern Washable Paints are a standout choice for older kids, according to Ebel. She highlights their exceptional quality and vibrant, highly pigmented colors. They’re washable, too, so cleanup is a breeze.

For everyday use, Chun recommends the affordable paper rolls and pads from Melissa and Doug. Ebel also mentioned the big paper roll as a kid’s art essential. And both of them say the brand’s easel, which we have written about over and over again, is a solid buy.

For everyday use, Chun recommends the affordable paper rolls and pads from Melissa and Doug. Ebel also mentioned the big paper roll as a kid’s art essential. And both of them say the brand’s easel, which we have written about over and over again, is a solid buy.