Fine Motor Skills and Sticker Art

A preschool teacher informed me that one of the best ways to develop fine motor skills is through sticker art.  As I've watched my little ones develop I've seen the truth of this born out.  So I thought I'd share a couple of sticker projects that I've done with my girls.

Our focus at the time was animals and their habitats.  Because my girls are both very young we started very simply with water, land and air.  We had a different color construction paper for each element which I encouraged them to decorate appropriately.  Clouds were added to the sky and lily pads to the water but nothing to the land.  I think they were in a hurry to get to the stickers.

For stickers I used the Eye like Stickers: Animals book.  The stickers are reusable and came in a variety of types and sizes.  (A side note on reusable stickers - at this age it is a totally ridiculous concept.)  Also, stickers are organized by color rather than type so you don't have to worry about working with a page of stickers and only using one of your habitat papers.  For younger children you will want to remove the sticky paper around the actual stickers until they are more experienced.  Also, be prepared to put a number of stickers back together again.

After that more basic lesson we went into more details about animal habitats.  Our next sticker project involved drawing a farm complete with a barn, stable, chicken coop and pond.  We used the Lift Stick & Learn Farm Animals book.  I particularly liked this book because it has sticker sheets specific to each page of the book.  Your child matches the appropriate sticker to its shadow and when you are done you have a book that explains farm life to children as well as a 'can you spot these' section for each page.  And, of course, there are additional stickers which you can use in your own farm sticker project.

My daughters both enjoyed playing with the stickers though I'm uncertain how much my younger daughter learned from the experience.  But if nothing else it helped develop her fine motor skills.  I hope it works well for you.