Sticker Book

My kids are always getting stickers, as rewards, or from the fruit shop, or from the school banking, or dentist. What ever they are, the kids love them. But the great question is what to do with them all that keeps the walls and furniture sticker free.

Miss 3 and I decided to make a sticker book. We took 4 pages of different coloured paper, and made them into a book in much the same way as the fairy book we made a few days ago; stapling to the outside from the centre of the book, folding over the staple ends, and covering the staple ends with sticky tape to stop them from catching on anything.

And then Miss 3 could happily stick stickers to her hearts content.

After a while I decided to get a bit educational on her, and add a counting activity. I drew some boxes and wrote a number under each box. She loved sticking the right number of stickers in each box and then she drew her own boxes with numbers on another page.

Travel Activity Book

I really wanted to make some wipe-erase activity sheets. I first bought wipe erase pens, but although they wrote well on clear folder pockets and smooth clear plastic, I found they wiped off very easily. This made the drawings (and little hands) very messy. Not to mention that the ink didn't wash out of clothes. Meanwhile they wouldn't wipe off laminated pages at all.

It wasn't until I heard about dry-erase crayons from Crayola and found a $5 packet of them at Target, that this idea really started to take shape.

The dry-erase crayons don't work easily on clear folder pockets (too much drag), but they do work well on laminated paper. Even better, they rub off quite easily with the cloth that comes with them, but don't rub off on your hand.

So then, time to make an activity travel book. I wanted something that would be suitable for planes, restaurants, the back of the car, rainy days, etc. so I made the pages A5 size.

I first started with some scenes that could be filled in with crayons or stickers. Miss 3 loves finishing a scene, wiping it off and then drawing it again. Especially if she has some company to do it with. Her favourite is the scene with the people, but I also included a space scene, underwater scene and a road. I used ripped paper, stickers and crayons to make them.

I then printed out some spot the difference puzzles (Mr 4's favourite puzzle at the moment), and I drew in some activities like a maze, thumbprints to make thumbprint doodles, and make-your-own sums in the left-over spaces. The crayons unfortunately don't show up fantastically on the red paper. The kids love mazes which are like streets with a different picture at each dead-end. And the maze lasts longer because they like visiting each object in turn. They are a little too easy for Mr 4, but that just means he tells me how they are too easy while he's busy doing them.

Next I put in the classic travel games: battle ships and close the square.

I also put in a blank page with a few other suggestions of games like tic-tac-toe or hangman that could be played there. I wrote the alphabet along one side to make hangman easier.

Finally I put in a home made plane scavenger hunt.

Edited to add: I have now made a plane trip scavenger hunt you can download for free from here.

I bound the book together using ring loops. This way I can change the pages to add things like my homemade i-spy pages (if I decide to add them in), new puzzles, new mazes or a page to collect stickers on. I can also take out the plane i-spy, and put in a car bingo etc.

Rice Play Tray

This is a great activity for a rainy day, or for when you want to make dinner without a couple of tired kids under your feet. Just get a baking tray, pour on a cup of uncooked rice, and find all your small diggers and tip trucks, tractors and animals. It usually ends up with a bit of a rice on the floor, but that's very easily swept up. And definitely worth it if it keeps the kids happily playing quietly.