Click here to read How to Make a Sticker Puzzle for your Sticker Fan (2 ways!) on Hands On As We Grow
I love when a Hands On As We Grow reader shares an activity! This sticker puzzle is a smart fine motor activity tested and shared by Brittney P.
I am constantly on the lookout for new items to up-cycle. My son loves stickers, and I’ve sometimes wondered what I could do with the sticky outline on a sticker page. You know… the part that’s left after you take the stickers off?
I came up with this fun activity for my puzzle-loving toddler… and guess what? You can use it over and over if you want to. And I finally found something to do with the sticker outline!
If you have a child who loves puzzles and stickers like mine, then this is an activity you must try. It’s so simple!
The basic supplies for this activity:
- 1 page of stickers with a variety of shapes and sizes
- 2 sheets of any color cardstock paper (affiliate link)
- Scissors
Plus a few items that are optional, but recommended for younger kids…
- Bowl or ledge to temporarily place the stickers
- Sheet Protector (affiliate link) or gallon-sized zip bag
Method #1: Make a Reusable Sticker Puzzle
To make your sticker puzzle, start with your sticker page. Peel off the stickers and stick them to a piece of cardstock (I used white).
Now take off the outline, the sticky part that is left when you take the stickers off. Start at a corner and gently peel it off so you don’t tear it. Then stick it onto a piece of cardstock paper that is a different color than the sticky outline. I used orange.
I cut down the orange cardstock to better fit the size of the outline. And then I also cut out each individual sticker piece. (It actually didn’t take as long as I thought it would.)
That’s it! Now you just put it together like a normal puzzle. My son loved his sticker puzzle, and he will be able to do this over and over again. (Maybe I should have thought about laminating each sticker piece for extra durability…but that just wasn’t in the cards today.)
For storage, I put it all in a gallon-sized ziploc bag. And I always recommend doing an activity like this on a cookie sheet to help contain all the little pieces… especially if you’re in the car or anywhere outside the home.
Note: I am planning on putting either velcro or magnet pieces on the puzzle pieces and the outline so they stay in place better.
Method #2: Super-Quick One Time Sticker Puzzle
If you don’t have time to cut out all the puzzle pieces, here is another option that was just as fun!
This set up is so easy. The sticker page I used even had some missing stickers, so I simply cut out a part of the page that had all the stickers still there.
Take off the outline again and stick it onto a piece of cardstock paper that is a different color than the sticky outline. Again, you can cut the cardstock paper down, or leave it as is.
Next, take all of the stickers off the page and stick just the tip of each one onto the edge of a bowl, a window ledge, or the edge of a box, etc.
You could let your child take them off him/herself, but that depends on how well he/she can do that without ripping the sticker. And stickers with crazy shapes can make that hard. So, your choice… I went ahead and took them all off myself.
Here are some more ways for kids to work on tricky fine motor skills!
We learned very quickly that my son likes to make sure the sticker fits exactly in the right place. EXACTLY. And well, that’s kind of hard for a little kid, so he kept wanting to pull it off the page and of course it tore the cardstock.
So I grabbed a sheet protector and that made it much easier to peel off in case he didn’t get it exactly right! (You could use a gallon-sized zip bag, too.)
You may be able to peel off the stickers from the sheet protector and put them back on the white sticker page they came on and do this again. We didn’t try it, but it may just work.
And if not, at least you had a few minutes of fun together doing it one time! And if you want to do it again, just grab another page of stickers!
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