End of year gifts for preschool students: cheap and safe

The best end of year gift for preschool students is the one you already have: their own artwork from the year, gathered into a folder or stapled book with their name on the cover. Add one small thing for summer that a two-to-five-year-old can use safely, like chunky sidewalk chalk, a bottle of bubbles or a board book, and you are done for a dollar or two per child. Skip candy, balloons and anything with small parts.

Preschoolers are different from older students. They cannot read a note, many of them still put things in their mouths, and they are thrilled by things an eight-year-old would shrug at. If you are buying for a school-age class, our guide to end of year gifts for students is the better fit.

Free gifts that families keep

• The art portfolio. Save a few pieces from each child through the spring. Fold a large sheet of construction paper in half, have the child decorate the front, and slide their work inside. Write the date on each piece.
• A handprint or footprint page. One page per child with a painted handprint and the date. Families compare it to the same child's hand years later. Use washable paint.
• A "things I said this year" page. Write down one or two things each child told you during the year (what they want to be, their favorite food) and copy it onto a card. Nobody else can give this one.
• A photo of them with you. One printed photo per child, with the class name and year on the back. Check photo permissions first (see the note below).
• A class song or rhyme sheet. Print the words to the songs you sang all year so families can keep singing them over summer.

Kids come back to pages that show them, and a portfolio of their own drawings works on the same idea. It is also free.

Small, cheap and safe for ages 2 to 5

Gift	Good for	Safety note
Chunky sidewalk chalk	2 and up	Thick sticks, not small pieces
Bubbles	2 and up	Wands without small detachable parts
A board book	2 and up	Sturdy for little hands
Chunky crayons and a coloring page	2 and up	Look for the AP seal
A seed cup ("watch me grow")	3 and up	Seeds are small, so a grown-up plants them
A sticker sheet	3 and up	Supervise younger kids
A small paperback picture book	3 and up	Used book sales stretch the budget
A bucket and shovel	2 and up	Check the age label

For art supplies, ACMI says to check for the AP Seal on creative products for kids in sixth grade or younger, which means a toxicologist has certified the product is not harmful when used as intended. Our guide to crayons vs markers for toddlers covers which kind suits which age.

Pick one item. A single good thing in a bag with the child's name on it feels like a gift. A bag of tiny trinkets is mostly a choking risk and a cleanup job for parents.

What to skip, and why

Choking is the big one for this age. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that balloons, balls, marbles, pieces of toys and foods, small round objects, cause the most choking deaths, and lists pen and marker caps and button batteries among household items to keep away from young children. The same page advises keeping high-risk foods from children until age 4 or older and following the age recommendations on toy packages. Federal toy rules have a specific test for toys intended for children under 3 that present a choking hazard because of small parts, which is why so many trinkets say "not for children under 3."

So skip:

• Party-store trinket bags. Tiny rubber balls, bouncy rings, plastic jewelry and capsule toys.
• Balloons. Even as decorations on the last day.
• Candy, gum and hard treats. The CDC estimates that 1 in 13 children have food allergies, about 2 students per classroom, and hard candy is a choking risk on top of that.
• Light-up toys with coin batteries. Unless the battery door screws shut.
• Different gifts for different kids. Three-year-olds notice. Same gift for everyone.

In a mixed-age daycare room with toddlers and pre-K kids together, buy for the youngest child in the room.

Keepsake options with a little more budget

If a room parent or the PTA is helping, a few options make the class itself the gift:

• A class coloring book. Every child draws a self-portrait, you copy and staple a set for each family. Our guide to making a class coloring book has the template and steps.
• A class memory book. A few pages per child plus group photos and a class list. See our class memory book guide for a free template.
• A printed class photo. One group shot, printed and labeled with first names.
• A class story with every child drawn in. Our Classroom Edition is $199 for up to 24 children, each one the star of a page, delivered as a PDF licensed for classroom printing, with printed copies at $9 each in batches of 10 or more. Pages are drafted with AI illustration tools from photos and checked by a person before they go out. It is the priciest idea on this page, and the art portfolio does a lot of the same job for free.

A photo and privacy note

Any gift built on photos of children needs a parent's OK. Many schools collect media consent at enrollment, so check that list before printing or sharing any child's picture, and ask directly for this project if you are unsure. Give children whose families decline a drawn page or a handprint page instead, so no one is left out. Do not post class photos online without separate permission.

A last-week plan

1. Two weeks out: pull each child's art into a folder. Check allergies and photo permissions.
2. One week out: buy one safe item per child. Make the handprint pages.
3. Last day: put everything in a bag with the child's name, and hand it to the grown-up at pickup, not the child, so nothing gets opened in the car seat.

For more classroom projects, see the classrooms and groups guides.

Questions parents ask