From: I first posted about this Kumon Let’s Sticker and Paste book here. In the meantime, I received a great comment from Julie at The Adventures of Bear about how to make sticker work easier for tots. She suggested that I peel the excess sticker material off of the sheet, leaving only the stickers on the backing before I give it to Sweet Pea.
Materials:
Procedure:
- Tear out page from the book and then cut out only the corresponding stickers.
- Peel the excess sticker paper from around the stickers. Leave only the stickers on the backing.
- If your tot hasn’t worked with stickers before, show him or her how to peel off the stickers and apply them to a page, otherwise just hand the stickers and the appropriate page to your child.
- You may need to point to the area where they should apply the stickers.
Observations: Sweet Pea has always had trouble getting little stickers off of the sheet and often asked for help getting them started whenever she worked with them. What a super idea Julie gave us about removing the extra sticker material! This little change has made it so much easier for Sweet Pea to get the stickers off on her own.
The Let’s Sticker book is a great. Sweet Pea loves it, but I try to limit her to only about 4 pages at a time so she is always engaged when I bring it out. She especially had fun with this picture that let her put winter clothes on a little boy. It made me think that she would like some sort of paper dolls.
From the Trenches: The stickers are somewhat removable (by a careful adult) from the page if they get stuck in the wrong spot. However, the stickers are impossible to remove from each other if they get stuck together. This characteristic has been know to cause uncontrollable crying.
Rating: 3 Stars * (Fun, Easy, Independent)
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Someone pointed out the same tip to me and it’s made our sticker activities so much more enjoyable.
We have several of those Kumon books. I have to say – I wasn’t too thrilled when my Mouse was at the age of your Sweet Pea (maybe a little older). I described my impressions here – http://teachingyoungchildren.wordpress.com/2009/03/04/are-japanese-toddlers-ahead/ (this is my other blog :)) Now Mouse is 31 month, so maybe I’ll try them again and see how it goes. She also has some troubles with stickers, but it works a lot better, if I cut small stickers into strips. Then she can bend the paper strip with stickers and peel them off.
Thanks so much for your comment. We own the other books in this set too and I haven’t even attempted the “Let’s Cut” book because I’m not comfortable with her handling scissors yet. I was really surprised that book had 2+ as the age. And she likes the “Let’s Fold” book, but it is too hard for her. That doesn’t really stop us from using it though. lol.
I’m sorry that the Kumon books haven’t worked for you yet. I thought the sticker & glue one was perfect for her, especially after I helped her with the ‘remove-the-excess-sticker-paper’ technique. She’s even done fairly well with the gluing portion… and she has progressively gotten better, which I think is the point. I will post about the “Let’s Color” book soon, but I did think it start out at a good level for a just-turned 2 year old. So you might want to try again with those 2 books now.