What’s inside your junk drawer? Markers? Crayons? Stickers? From the Target Dollar Store to my favorite pack on Amazon, stickers make us happy. Yet after a few DIY cards, the half-full sticker sheet gets tossed aside and shoved back into the bottom drawer. What’s next?
In my humble opinion, playing with stickers has become my thing, and I have a ton of ideas to share. It’s safe to say I have just a few ways to play with stickers! Here are some sticker activities so you can clean up that space and use them for your next activity.
RELATED: Stickers make excellent tools for fine motor play.
Supplies
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Sticker Collection
Before we start, let’s get some stickers your way. This is a great sticker pad that will keep you going through many activities!
Kids can use stickers in many ways, helping them practice their motor skills and stay focused on a task. Read the 10 reasons why every kid needs to play with stickers. Stickers are also great for on the go. Toss them in your busy bag!
The Best Sticker Activities
- Connect the Dots Sticker Activity: I will sound like a broken record, but this dot-to-dot matching fine motor activity helps with pencil grip! We want to do easy ideas like this before we ask our child to write the letters. Simply put, this activity is a risk-free way to practice lines, curves, and pencil grip.
- Decorate Elmer with Stickers: This Elmer the Elephant sticker activity helps toddlers strengthen small hand muscles as I get to empty the dishwasher. It’s true! Winner, winner, chicken dinner! Now, the dishwasher is not as exciting as a trip to Target. – But it needs to be done without someone asking me for a snack at the same time. – I know you know.
- Feed the Sharks Stickers: Grab your dot stickers because this counting activity for preschoolers is a blast. My three-year-old strengthened his counting skills and improved his number sense through play, which is exactly how we want children to learn.
- Light the Strand Sticker Match: Dot the lights is where it’s at, and this holiday dot stickers activity does not disappoint. We already know that dot stickers make crazy fun Breakfast Invitations. Supplies are simple, and the learning engages children in play first thing in the morning.
- Mystery Shapes: Mystery Shapes adds excitement to your morning! Making math fun helps preschoolers take more risks in their learning. This is so important for early learners. Mystery Shapes is a great fine motor activity in toddlers, and preschoolers practice pencil grip through play. Grab the stickers. It’s a fun one!
- Shape People: Shape people with a monster madness mix. Yep. My toddler is 100% here for this sticker activity. These shape people are hard to resist and also have a little counting activity twist. Put this toddler math activity on repeat. It’s a good one!
- Sticker Conversation Starters: Have extra stickers? Try a conversation starter sticker activity! Try this fun activity to use up all those half-used sticker sheets shoved into your junk drawer. Better yet, this conversation starter sticker activity will get your early learners chatting! One of the main reasons I love stickers is that each one prompts my boys to tell a funny story.
- Sticker Match: Have you tried Sticker Match to help pencil grip? You must! This learning-through-play sticker activity is simple, easy to set up, and packed with a fine motor punch. Sticker Match is also a risk-free way to improve pencil grip!
- Sticker Maze: Who’s up for a sticker maze? It’s a fine motor win every time! What if I told you this sticker maze also helps fine motor development and assists with pencil grip? It is a risk-free activity to help strengthen fingers for future writing. It is basically prewriting magic! The pressure of forming letters and numbers correctly is off, and the practice of holding the hand steadily is on.
- Sticker Pairs: We are on a matching game high over here. My seven and five-year-old are taking the lead, and my three-year-old wants desperately to be a part of the group. Sticker pairs are a fun gateway for your toddler into the more complex memory-matching games! Even better, you know that I enjoyed that hot cup of morning tea as he found sticker pairs. – In true Breakfast Invitations fashion.
- Sticker Puzzles: I wish I could tell you that this magnetic tile sticker puzzle came to me on a whim. But it didn’t. In fact, this indoor game came from a scroll on the gram. When I saw this simple way to play with magnetic tiles on @unknitandtiedtogether, it screamed Sunday Night Setup.
- Sticker Size Sort: Sticker sorting by size cleans up those stickers lurking in the art car’s bottom drawer and underneath the couch—double win. So let’s scoop up the big and little stickers. This preschool math activity is one that children will play with for years to come!
RELATED: Want to combine math with stickers? Try this Sticker Number Match activity!
What Kids Learn With Stickers
- Adding – Adding up stickers is way more fun than trying to learn to add using a worksheet.
- Art – I always have a stash of stickers in the art cart to pull out on the fly.
- Build fine motor strength – Peeling and placing those stickers takes careful fine motor strength.
- Color sorting – When you use a collection of stickers with different colors, your child can practice matching them up.
- Connecting puzzles – I like to use stickers to help children follow lines and connect the dots.
- Conversation starters – Kids love to talk about stickers, and so do I! From colors to size, to how they feel, we always have plenty to talk about.
- Counting – I love to use stickers in counting activities.
- Making pairs – Pairing two of the same stickers together helps kids recognize patterns.
- Making shapes – You can place these stickers in a certain way so that when your child draws lines between them, it makes a shape!
- Sorting by size – Big stickers, little stickers, what goes together? These are the sort of questions I like to ask my children.
- Sticker mazes – A great activity is using these stickers to make mazes, which are incredible for math.
After More Breakfast Invitations?
- 101 Preschool Activities
- Match the Caps – a Simple Preschool Activity
- What’s Inside? A Beginning Sound Activity for Kindergarten
- Will It Stick? – A Preschool Thinking Activity
Frequently Asked Questions
Stickers are a great tool to strengthen fine motor strength in hands. Children practice hand-eye coordination as they peel off each sticker and place it onto the paper.
Dot stickers can be used for color matching, graphing, sorting, counting, and decorating.
Our favorite pack of stickers is in this activity supply list for kids. I also find seasonal stickers at Target near the seasonal section in the back of the store.
