15 fun and easy sticker activities for toddlers
If you’re a first-time mom and haven’t been introduced to the world of toddler stickers, let me tell you – they can be life-changing. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that your toddler is going to alter his worldview based on a pack of stickers. BUT they can certainly help with fun, fine motor skill development, and behavioral issues. You can use fun and easy sticker activities for toddlers in this post for both behavior and play!
We first started noticing our daughter loved stickers around age two. I’m sure she played with them before then, but they weren’t as novel or exciting until around that age. From two onward, we used them for playtime, rewards, and crafting. If you want to learn fifteen uses for stickers that you hadn’t thought of, keep reading!
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Although most people probably associate stickers with a reward, they’re actually awesome for a variety of toddler activities. Check out this list of fifteen sticker activities for toddlers, and then go out and get a pack today!
Sticker Reward charts
This is probably one of the most obvious toddler sticker activities. If you want behavior implementation to go a long way, creating a sticker reward chart is the way to go. We use ours to remind our toddler about good behavior and it also gives them something to look forward to as a reward for doing the right things.
It’s really a win-win. One way we don’t overdo the treats or rewards is that our daughter needs to get five stickers in order to get something she wants. Right now it’s been small pieces of candy, but if we were working on something big like potty training I’d go with a new toy or something more novel.
Sticker activities can be travel entertainment
I hadn’t thought about this until we were actually on the road, but giving our daughter a bunch of stickers and a pad of paper provided endless entertainment for the car and airplane. Now stickers are one of the main things I bring when planning to travel with toddlers.
Related: Tips to keep you sane while traveling with toddlers
The last time we traveled she didn’t even need a special sticker or color book. For awhile she stuck all her smiley face stickers into a blank notebook that we used for drawing as well. It was great to multipurpose and use one notebook for both creative options.
Bonus – I got all the supplies at the Dollar Store!
Crafting decoration
This is pretty obvious, but adding stickers to any crafting project is just one way to give it an upgrade.
Painting? Add some sticker bling.
Sorted with sticks or glued them to your papers or foam board? Add a few stickers!
My little lady LOVES using gem stickers or more pearlescent stickers on papers she’s already decorated. I’m not sure if she just likes adding colors, but she loves that the gems make it fancy.
Fun additions to coloring books
Again, this is just an upgrade and a way to extend crafting time. Did your little one get sick of coloring after just one picture? Give them some stickers to dress up their creations. This will almost always buy you another 5-10 minutes of crafting time.
Behavior tracking
This is a little different than reward charts but follows the same principle. Give your child stickers based on the behaviors they exhibit throughout the day. If you’re working on not hitting or biting, ensure you’ve labeled each section of the day and give your child a sticker if they exhibit the correct behavior.
Under the same principle, you can also “lose” stickers if you don’t exhibit the behavior consistently throughout the period of time.
Chore Charts
Using stickers for chore charts is great for multiple reasons. If you are going to give your child something anyway for completing chores, the sticker is the first incentive.
Stickers are one part of the “treat” and if they’re going on for a bigger reward, they can then use the stickers to track where they are on the way to the bigger item.
Many times the sticker is a reward in itself, but once you’ve taught your child that multiple stickers in a row might get them something else, they get even more excited.
Use Stickers for Color Sorting
Buy stickers in different colors and have your child sort them onto pages of the same color. I.e. yellow stickers go on the yellow paper, green stickers on the green paper, etc.
This helps teach colors, and depending on how you set it up, it can also help with learning shapes.
Sticker activities for toddlers can be used for shape sorting
Buy stickers of different shapes, or draw different shapes on each piece of paper to accomplish learning of both color and shape sorting.
If you have yellow triangles, put them on the yellow paper, or you can stick your yellow circles inside the yellow triangle you’ve drawn on the paper.
Shape and color sorting can go hand in hand once your child has mastered one of the skills.
Fine Motor skill development
Want to know an added bonus and benefit of sticker activities for toddlers?
Fine motor skill development!
Peeling all those stickers has an added benefit of developing fine motor skills! Pincer development is particularly important for toddlers.
If you work with a variety of sticker shapes and sizes you’ll further enhance the development of this skill.
Counting
The great news about this is that you don’t even need stickers with numbers on them. Although that’s one way to work on counting, you can simply have your child put stickers in specific counting groups.
Here are a few ways to practice counting activities with stickers:
- Draw circles and tell your toddler to put different amounts of stickers in each circle. I’d start with numbers 1-5
- Layout multiple rows of stickers (in numerical order for beginners) and have your child count them with you
- Layout 10 stickers in a row, or group stickers, adding one sticker each time up to 10
- Grab one of your sticker books or somewhere you’ve already been playing with stickers and have your child count them. If you have an older toddler or preschooler, let them try alone at first
Depending on your child’s age you can have a lot of learning fun with counting and stickers.
Imagination & Storytelling
Stickers can really help with imagination development and storytelling. Ask your child to take the sticker pages and create a story on a piece of paper, and then to tell you the story once they’re finished.
Likely they’ve only done this by drawing a picture, so asking for an entire story will be a new and fun challenge. AND they won’t have to draw so they can focus on the narrative. It should be really interesting!
Learning letters
One of the best sticker activities for toddlers is to help with learning letters. Getting alphabet stickers is a great way to learn letters and teach your toddler how to spell his or her name.
We love getting out the sticker pack and pointing out where the letters are for her name. She can then work to peel them off (lots of different shapes here for fine motor and pincer development) and put her name on the paper.
Sharing (with sticker exchanges)
Asking your child to share stickers with you or a friend, or to trade stickers, is a great way to promote sharing and generosity at this early age. Although she might not want to share her stickers at first, once she learns she’ll get some back the game should get easier.
Mom Tip: If you’re doing a sticker exchange, it’s good to get two packs of everything. You can promote sharing, but either way, no one ends up sad at the end.
Sensory exploration (scratch and sniff stickers)
Stickers can also be a fun way to encourage sensory development when you have scratch and sniff options. Your child will develop motor skills while scratching, and learn to tell you about specific smells with the sniffing.
It’s another win-win.
Sequencing
Finally – once your toddler is a little older, you can start sequencing the stickers. This also works really well with beads necklaces, but beads can be so much harder to clean up. Give your toddler different colors of stickers and ask her to make a straight line of pink, blue, and yellow, alternating the colors down the page.
There are many more uses for stickers that I could come up with, but hopefully the above list gets you started with multiple hours of fun and learning, all from little packs you can get at the dollar store.
I need stickers now!
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