Sticker Play

Stickers come in a wide variety and are so fun and colorful. I remember when I was teaching that my students really enjoyed working with stickers. I decided I would breakout the stickers and let Maci work with them. Working with stickers seems simple enough. Just peeling and sticking, right? But did you know that peeling and placing stickers has a much bigger benefit than simply that? I will talk about some of the benefits and then ways to adapted the activity. 

Recommended for children 1 years of age or older and as always use active adult supervision when completing any activity. 

Skills Your Child is Working On When Working with Stickers: 

• Pincer Grasp: Stickers are a great way for your little one to work on fine motor skills.  Peeling the sticker requires a pincer grasp in order to pull up the edge of a sticker from a sticker sheet. Your child may need you to model and/or help along the way.  This can be a difficult task for some kids. It will become easier with practice. 

• Hand Strengthening: Children will be working on strengthening the small muscles of their hands when peeling stickers and sticking them. This will be important especially later on when they are coloring, writing, zipping, snapping, or buttoning clothes, and many more. 

• Bilateral Hand Coordination: When peeling stickers your child will practice using two hands. They will use one to hold the sheet and the other hand to peel the sticker.  They will need to use both hands. This will come with time and you may need to assist. 

• Sensory Exploration: There are a variety of stickers. You can have your child work with smelly, smooth, bumpy, fuzzy, sparkly, and a variety of other stickers. I will link a few at the end. 

• Language Development: As you are working with the stickers talk about each one. You can mention the shape, color, size, type, etc. We worked with ocean themed stickers, so I talked with Maci about the different sea animals. "Where are you going to put the orange sea turtle?"

Adaptions:

There are so many ways that you can use stickers with your child. Here are a few ways you can change it up:

• Use stickers to write a story. Place stickers on a page and then have your child write or help your child write a story to go along with the picture. 
• Draw a line or write letters on the page and then have your child place the stickers on the lines. 
• Free play, this is what I did with Maci. I let her explore and use the stickers how she pleased. She did try to eat the stickers a few times and I had to remind her that we place the stickers on the paper.