Last-minute stocking fillers for kids

As the number of shopping days before Christmas dwindles, fear not if those stockings are looking a little sparse. Here’s our 11th-hour guide

Younger children
To offset the plastic invasion of giant toy stores, many parents prefer to shop around for wooden and other handmade toys, and there are a number of individual shops in Brussels aiming to please. The Grasshopper has a good range of wooden toys, as well as cuddly toys and dressing-up costumes. There’s a branch in Leuven as well as the one near the capital’s Grand‘Place. As its name suggests, Woodee in Schaerbeek stocks original wooden toys for all ages, plus creative, educational and soft toys, board games and train sets.

Casse-Noisettes in Saint-Gilles also has wooden toys, trains and animals, fair trade items, puppets, dressing-up costumes and games. Particularly recommended is L’Atelier de Gepetto, which has four stores: Watermael-Boitsfort, Woluwe-Saint-Lambert, Kraainem and La Hulpe. It’s an Ali Baba’s cave crammed with toys: board games, Lego, wooden blocks, DIY things and a great fancy-dress section. And there’s a great selection of crafts and creative materials at Marie Ficelle in Ixelles, which serves adults as well as children. Scrapbooking and jewellery making supplies are among its large selection.

In Etterbeek and Ixelles, Oliwood Toys stocks crafts, puzzles, dressing-up clothes, figurines, outdoor toys, puzzles, soft toys, bags, school accessories, trains, dinner sets and dolls. Dutch homeware store Dille & Kamille has 13 outlets in Flanders and Brussels with an excellent range of dolls and soft toys, cooking utensils specially adapted for small hands, musical instruments and wooden toys, puppets, bags, dolls’ houses and puzzles.

Claire’s Accessories in Rue Neuve is good for stocking fillers, and Claire’s Club has a range for three- to six-year-olds: Hello Kitty earmuffs and a fun range of hats, scarves and gloves.

Teenagers
They may consider themselves too cool to care about Santa, but most youngsters – and adults, for that matter – still enjoy the thrill of a personalised stocking. So for tricky teenagers, traditional fillers of sweets, toiletries and mini gadgets all go down a treat. Outdoor ideas that work for both sexes are camping cutlery or solar-powered LED keyrings from Nature & Decouvertes in Woluwe shopping centre and City 2 (it also has gifts for younger children). For sleepyheads, a mobile phone frequently fails as an alarm clock: one mail-order option is this colour-changing digital alarm clock. Sports lovers will always be happy with new clothing and equipment, and Decathlon has gift vouchers from €10 to €150 which are valid for two years and can be used in branches abroad. Other perennial favourites are mini travel board games, playing cards, iTunes vouchers, branded wallets and purses, USB sticks, iPod and smartphone cases plus paperbacks (of the non-scholarly variety). 

More boy-specific gifts can include designer boxers, gloves, hats and scarves, small gadgets such as mini construction kits, magic tricks, comics and male grooming products such as the Sparkle  and White Musk collections from The Body Shop.

Girls can be easier thanks to the worship of the body beautiful. Favourites are lip gloss, hair accessories, earrings, cool tights and leggings, perfume (try handbag size), undies and clothes vouchers. On the nail front you can’t fail to please with OPI nail varnish, which has funky names such as I’m Not Really a Waitress. The Top Ten gift box with 10 dinky-sized bottles is an ideal introduction to the sought-after American line. It costs €39.95, while individual bottles are €13.95. Travel-size smellies are a neat fit for a stocking and available from The Body Shop, as is Metallic Eye Definer Pencil, which suits the party season.

Experiences
An alternative is to offer vouchers for outdoor experiences. Season tickets are available for Planckendael animal park in Mechelen, Technopolis science and technology centre, also in Mechelen, and Walibi theme park near Wavre.

A new thrill in Brussels is the first Belgian Formula 1 simulator at City Kart in Forest. Used to test the racing skills of drivers such as Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen, it is accessible to everyone over 1.40m tall. It costs €20 for one session or €17 per session with a 10-session card. Budding speed freaks can also hone their skills at City Kids, which provides training and karting for children 1.35m and above on a reserved track on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The same tariff applies.