Quiet time activity – dot stickers

As a stay-at-home-mum without a helper, I am always looking for ways to keep J occupied safely for 15 to 30 minutes so that I can quickly finish off some work.

Today I quickly grab a piece of rough paper and drew some lines, gave a bunch of stickers for J and asked him to stick the stickers on the curvy and zig zag lines, and in between the two “almost-horinzonal-straight” lines.

J is used to playing around with stickers and magnets on the magnet boards where he is allowed to create / play with the stickers / magnets in the ways he like to. He would create stories or count the numbers or do sorting etc.

But today I wanted him to work a bit more on hand and eye coordination and fine motor skill, by asking him to stick on and between the lines I drew.

Working with stickers is a great way to practice pincer grasp when he needs to use the very tips of his fingers to pull up the edge of a sticker from a sticker sheet.

It also helps to work on bilateral hand coordination where he needs use to one hand to hold the sheet and use the dominant hand to peel off the stickers. Both hands are involved in the work but doing different tasks.

It took me one minute to set it up, and there he was, safely practicing some important skills by himself.