Parents: Do you give your child's classmates little holiday presents, on behalf of our child, and if so, what are some gift suggestions I can give on her behalf?

If I were going to, I would probably go to Oriental.com and get something, but it’s probably to late now. You might be able to find inexpensive little gifts at the dollar store or a party store.

I did not ever get or receive gifts in school.

If, however, you think it is important, what about making some Christmas cookies with your child and giving each classmate a small plate of them?

I have never given gifts to my children’s classmates. If I decided I wanted to I would probably give pencils or little snacks, or something along those lines.

No, with so many other people to buy for, we just can’t afford getting even small things for our kids’ classmates.

I guess some fairly inexpensive ideas, if you plan to give things out, would be cute pencils or pretty iced cookies in those little decorative cellophane baggies.

We’ve never done Christmas gifts for classmates, and as far as I can recall my kids haven’t brought home gifts from other kids. We do give homemade treats to the teachers and bus drivers though.

My daughter is in 7th grade and saves up some money before Christmas to get each of her good friends a small gift.

If you can do something like that and want to, I think it’s a nice thing. I’m sure your daughter will have fun with it. Just keep in mind you are starting a precedent and may have to continue each year, at least until your child is in public school.

I gave gifts to the kids in my daughter’s preschool classes. It was fun and the kids enjoyed it. There were 11 kids she went through two years of pre-k with and they were very close.

Snowman soup or reindeer food are both inexpensive, easy and go over well with kids.

Stickers or a simple foam craft kit are also good ideas.

For a super tight budget, find some simple holiday coloring pages online (ones that will still look good small) then resize to fit 4 on a page. Print, cut and staple into a mini-coloring book. Use construction paper or color an extra piece of paper to make a cover.

Not I but my tactless friend Nottie wants to know if any kid really likes getting pencils disguised as presents.

I went to the store with her last night and I found these plastic containers with plastic animals inside. The container is a clear cylindrical shape, with an animal on top (different themes: lion, duck, pig, dinosaur, fish, crab, bear) and inside the container is a bunch of animals in that theme (jungle animals, farm animals, dinosaurs, sea animals, forest animals). They were regularly $3 and on sale for $1.49. There are 17 kids in her class, we got 18 of them. I am going to wrap them tonight (I figured a piece of 8½×11 red copy paper should do it, with ribbon on top and tag for each). I didn’t mind spending the money if it makes her happy to have gifts coming from her, and I figured it’s only once a year. I didn’t want to do the candy cane as a gift thing, as that was what her classmate gave to us and I didn’t want to copy it.

At Costco, earlier in the holiday season, they had gingerbread figures wrapped in cellophane, on clearance for about $7 for like 12 or 20, and silly me did not think of the classmates as someone to buy for at that time. Next year I will be on the lookout for stuff like that as potential gift items.

So for this year, $25 and change took care of the class (does not include teachers)!

I saw some cute little things at the Party store yesterday too.