When I plan school for the year, I make sure that I include planning lots of educational activities for my girls (ages 7, 5, and 3 1/2). In my opinion, planning what curriculum or unit study were going to work on is only half the battle.
Planning independent educational activities for my girls requires thought and resources as well.
We are heading into our 5th year of homeschooling (wow!) and have learned a few things along the way. There was a year where I didn’t have any activities planned for the non-readers and boy, I learned my lesson!
Having struggled with a million ‘Mama, what can I do NOW?’ moments, I have a running list of activities that I can pass them.
Sticker Books
One of those go-to independent activities are sticker books. The ones that work best for my girls have labeled sticker pages.
Usually in the middle of the book, you’ll find all of the sticker pages. They are typically grouped by page numbers.
Since my little girls do not yet have refined scissor skills, I cut out several of the sticker pages.
I then hand one set of stickers to my daughter and we find the right pages together.
Then she sticks to her heart’s content!
When she’s finished with that page, I just hand her a new sticker set.
When my littles want to be near me in the school room, but it needs to be quiet so I can work with one of my olders, this is the perfect activity! I can quietly hand off sticker sets and find the correct pages without lots of chaos and interrupting.
Mama’s Favorite Sticker Books
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Even though they’re a bit expensive, I buy nice quality sticker books. The 50 cent books at the Dollar Store definitely have their time and place, but they only have a few stickers and there is not a lot of direction with those.
By far our absolute favorite sticker book is Richard Scarry’s Big Busy Sticker and Activity Book. In fact, I’ve bought that book 3 different times because my little girls love it so much! (Not kidding!)
It is absolutely packed with activities and is well worth the money.
And the stickers are very sticky, which is not always the case with sticker books. Nothing is worse than a sticker book where the stickers aren’t sticky!
Here are other tried and true favorites from our house:
Do your children love sticker books also? What are your favorites?
CVC Matching Puzzle Cards
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I started homeschooling my oldest last year in Kindergarten, and my youngest went to preschool twice a week. On those days, we got a lot done at home. When my preschooler was at home, though, it was tough to keep her preoccupied. We started our year today and wow, what a difference, thanks to you! I pulled out our sticker books and she was entertained long enough for us to get our work done! Thank you for the idea! At least we started off the year on a good note! 🙂
Kim, oh that brings tears to my eyes! (it’s been an emotional day, haha) On Fridays, I’m posting either a) great books we’ve read during the week or 2) great kid ideas that have been total hits at our house.
So stay tuned! I’ve got a great one planned for this Friday if I can find time to type the post. 😉
Thank you for stopping by today and I am so tickled your first day went well! Blessings in your new homeschool year!