Do you realize that sticker can be used as a tool to nurture our child’s overall development? Children love to play with stickers. Therefore, we do not need to spend too much energy to get a child to sit down and work with the activity. It is such a simple tool that you can use it at home or in the school as part of the lesson plan for the children. There are variety of stickers in the market. Before we choose the right sticker, we need to target the area of development we want to nurture in our child!

Sticker nurture our child’s development by :

• improving and reinforcing the child’s fine motor control. Some children might find it difficult to remove the sticker as their fine motor skill is still not refined. I have a 3 years old boy unable to remove a sticker as his fine motor skill is still weak. He needs lots of practice to improve his fine motor skill.
• improving the child’s problem solving skill. For instance, the child keeps looking for way to remove the sticker without tearing it. He learns to adjust the paper or his fingers position in order to complete his task.
• improving the child’s concentration span. The child will be able to spend longer time to work with the activity. This helps develop his confidence and independence.
• developing good feelings within the child. The child enjoys the activity as well as feels happy each time he manages to remove his favorite sticker and stick it somewhere else.
• developing social skills. Children learn to share stickers with friends/peers. For instance, I gave a big piece of sticker to 3 boys. I told them that they need to share it among themselves. They were seen interacting with each other in brief conversation e.g. “I want the aeroplane”, “My daddy has tractor” and so on. They waited their turn instead of snatching from each other, with minimum guidance. Whenever they tend to fight, I’ll intervene by reminding them to share and they would say, “Later my turn, ok?”.

I would prefer animals or transportation or other educational stickers instead of cartoon stickers. Lets take animal sticker for example. We can ask the child to name the animals on the sticker. We may extend the learning by asking the child to match the beginning phonic sound or match the first alphabet letter of the name of the animal. I would write a letter “t” and “d” on a piece of paper. I asked the child to sound the letters. Then I asked them to stick the animals that begin with the sound “t” and “d”. The child would remove “tiger” and “dog” from the sticker and paste them accordingly. This activity is recommended for older children, 3.5years and above. We can also talk about the habitat of an animal or classification of animals.

We can draw a forest on a piece of paper, for example. Then give the a child a piece of wild animals’ sticker. He will use his imagination and creativity to stick the animals on that piece of paper. After he has finished his job, invite him to tell you the story or you many point at one animal, let say the tiger on the tree and ask him why it is on the tree. This is a way to lead our child to speak more and help him in his speech/language development.

There are still many ways to use sticker as a tool to nurture our child’s overall development. If you have other ideas, please do share with me and others. Enjoy the fun of the activity!