Whenever I went out and about with my busy toddler, I’d often pack some dot stickers, a little art journal and some pens in my bag to grab for a fast and easy activity on the go. Not only were they great for keeping little hands busy, they were also wonderful for developing fine motor skills alongside a range of other early learning skills like matching colours, letters, numbers and more! Today I’d like to share some simple dot sticker activities for toddlers and preschoolers!
You can grab dot stickers from Amazon (Amazon US*, Amazon AUS*) and use them for all kinds of find activities! Something like this is easy to alter for various ages and quick to throw together when you’re waiting for food at a cafe or waiting to see a doctor. Dot stickers make the perfect easy afternoon play invitation at home too!
Here are three different dot sticker activities you could try with your little learner.
Colour Matching
Matching colours is one of my favourite ways to use dot stickers with a range of different ages! For younger toddlers, I put some coloured dots on a piece of paper and invite my toddler to match the coloured dots with their coloured dot stickers.
For older children, I like to draw coloured shapes, zig-zag, wavy lines or even animals like the snakes below! These kinds of activities are great for fine motor skill development, developing your child’s pincer grip (using their pointer finger and thumb), hand-eye coordination, developing early numeracy skills (like one to one correspondence and matching) and even visual motor integration!
Name Matching
This is a great activity if your little learner is learning their name and beginning to recognise the different letters that make up their name. Write the letters of their name on the dot stickers and on the paper and invite your little learner to match the letters!
To start with, you might write their name in order and have them match the letters this way – even with a different colour for each letter. Eventually, you might even jumble up the letters across the page like the example below!
Addition Sums
For school-aged kids, you could match addition or subtraction sums too! It’s so easy to change them up based on your child’s developmental stage and interests.
Below you’ll see an example of an addition and subtraction dot sticker activity I prepared for our little boy who is 6 years old. He LOVES numbers and has been doing a lot of addition so I decided to make this one with a fun car theme to capture his interest by writing the total number on each car and then addition and subtraction sums on the stickers. You could change this up by putting a number in the middle of a flower and having the petals represent the addition or subtraction sums.
Bonus tip for easy sticker peeling!
If your little learner finds it hard to peel the stickers off the sheet, I have two tips to help! First, peel away the backing paper from your sticker sheet (if they have them). A lot of times, you’ll find a border around your stickers which makes it really hard for little fingers to separate the sticker from the sheet. So just peel that border away and leave just the stickers on the sheet.
And my second tip? Fold the sticker sheet just under the sticker so that half of the sticker peels away from the sheet and the other half stays attached to the sheet. This will give your toddler something to grab with their pointer finger and thumb.
Inside our Little Play Club membership, we share lots of tips just like these easy dot sticker activities! My goal is to provide you with all the ideas so you can get playing fast. I’ll teach you how to choose activities your kids will LOVE so you can enjoy a cheeky snack in peace. Click here to find out more and get your name on the waitlist!
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