gifts for children

As honorable as your intentions may be....you can easily step on toes or be considered a threat. If a stranger offered your kids stuff, wouldn't you be concerned or suspicious? If you are staying at a locals home, it's entirely different.
If you want to do something nice, why not offer a donation anonymosly to a local school via the church or a clinic.
It will be a more valued gift than a cheap toy IMO

Been back to Peru??? Try it. As a result of giving in some areas the local children see Gringos as walking sources of goodies. Begging zooms. At least it's not candy in your case. And yes school supplies are needed. CR isn't as poor as Peru... but it still applies. Stop be the local school...give a teacher a few boxes of pens to be distributed as they see the need. Stories of kidnapped kids keep popping up. Hmmm..there was a gringo handing out goods. If that happened in the local park in your town folks would be screaming pedophile. Just recently we've seen posters on here "seeking" to go to Central America. Just because someone is a "linguistics" expert doesn't necessarily mean anything. But don't put yourself in that position.

gifts of school supplies are great i try to do that myself BUT. i never give directly to the children. if i can find the father i give it to him baring that the mother . this can re enforce the family bond. if all else fails there is always a school or loca charity who will be glad to accept it. giving directly to kids open up a whole new field of potential disasters .
who was that masked man don,

Agree with above.

But, Costa Rica does have poverty, but with only 4 million citizens, far less than Peru.

All donations are best made to a school, church or even the local police, but not directly to children.

Head tot he local school and ask the headmaster for what the needs are, its could be paper, soccer balls, shoes, umbrellas etc...then head to local market, and purchase from a local vendor, supporting the local economy, and local families.

If you go to Scholastic.com, they have a large selection of Spanish books. I would imagine any school or library would welcome children's books. Many of the Scholastic books are paperback, so are lightweight...and they're cheap.

I can't stand the whole "Gringo's bearing gifts" scenarios and agree with the comments above. If you are going to do it then do it properly. Forget the cheap tat and go to a school and ask them what they need. If you can afford it buy it.
In the same "generous Gringo" type vein: its the rainy season now and I see all these very young kids in the pouring rain trying to hitch lifts and I just won't do it because I WILL NOT encourage kids to get into the cars of Gringos. There are some very dodgey Gringos out here.

BOOMER1....do you chase kids out of your yard and hide behind the curtain, waiting for them to return?....or try to hit water filled potholes as you pass the kids on the road? Just curious.

I love kids, Don Scoot, but I couldn't eat a whole one. ( I make King Herod look like Dr.Bernado). To prove that my heart is not a frozen lump of rock however here is a true story from this very day. A group of very young schoolgirls had received a drenching but for the reasons mentioned above I would not load them into the back of my Jeep as they were requesting. Instead I gave them my golf umbrella. Which they proceeded to fight over.
See?....brings tears to your eyes I bet.......

Damn right it brings tears to my eyes......drenched school girls,....how many can you fit in your jeep?