Longfellow ES students announce hottest toys of the holiday season

Fifth-graders use ‘Leader in Me’ principles to conduct annual ‘hot toy’ survey

Students at HISD’s Longfellow Elementary School have been polling their school-mates for the past 15 years to determine the hottest toys each holiday season, but this year, they took a slightly different approach.

Fifth-graders at that school applied the “seven habits of happy kids” that they’ve been learning through the Leader in Me program to the survey-taking process, such as “beginning with the end in mind” to break down the steps needed, or “being proactive” by analyzing newspaper circulars and TV commercials to see what stores were advertising the most.

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The goal of the annual event is to help parents and other adults avoid gift-giving mistakes when making their selections.

“Hopefully, we’ll save parents some time searching for that perfect gift,” said Longfellow fifth-grader Keiarra Spears, at a press conference held Nov. 25 to announce the results.

Many old favorites made an appearance in this year’s survey, such as Barbie, Legos, Play-doh, and Nerf toys, but there were also some surprises, such as first- and second-grade girls’ desire for jewelry and clothing’s appearance in the top three most-desired gifts among several age groups of both genders.

“Looks like we’re going to be seeing some very fashionable six- and seven-year-olds,” added Keiarra.

Below are the combined results of this year’s survey, broken down by gender, in descending order of popularity, for all ages.

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Girls Boys
  1. Jewelry
  2. Movies
  3. Music CDs
  4. Disney dolls (Frozen, in particular)
  5. Monster High dolls
  6. Hello Kitty dolls
  7. Fashion Angels
  8. Money
  9. Nail (manicure) sets
  10. Play-doh
  • Movies
  • Money
  • Nerf guns
  • Minecraft
  • Gift cards
  • Sports stuff
  • Legos
  • Pokemon
  • Clothes
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

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