I love that your heart is in the right place. I am so thrilled to see people wanting to give back in any way they can.
For most kids MP3 player means Ipod, pure plain and simple. The nanos are cheap and the shuffles are even cheaper. I bought my mom an 8 g Sansa last Christmas and she loves it.
I will strongly caution you regarding buying an expensive item though. In a previous post, I mentioned that I work in an inner city school and have worked in schools with an angel tree program. I saw parents taking the items (mostly expensive items) and selling it right there and then for drugs/other favors in front of us.
Some of the kids got an expensive item and we had to be extremely careful that the parent either picked it up (but that had problems--see above) or that the kids wasn't mugged for it after school. One kids got a DS from a very generous donor. The parent would never show up to get the gift, so we had to send the kid home with it. Fortunately it was small-- so we wrapped it up in about five different store bags with the dollar store bag on top and put it in a deep pocket of his jacket. We gave him explicit instruction not to tell anyone he had it, not stop anywhere and run on home. We also told his older cousin to watch out for him-- but didn't tell the older cousin what he had because the older cousin was in a gang! We left it pretty vague "Make sure nobody bothers him on the way home"
If you feel safe that this will not happen, I will caution agains the WM Gift cards. Some kids have no transportation (parents either) and getting to a store is often difficult
Some kids have no computer to transfers songs either. The school computer has streaming blocked and the libraries in town have closed up.
Instead of Mp3 players, I do see a few of my kids with songs on their phones. Most don't have Ipods or such with a lack of a computer or access to a computer.
