Dot stickers are one of my absolute favorite materials to use with Montessori-inspired extensions for toddlers and preschoolers, so I’m excited to share 10 different ways you can use them with your little ones! My go-to dot stickers are this size (and I love that they come in all the colors you’ll need to match the Montessori bead bars), but these smaller ones can also come in handy.
The very first way you should use dot stickers with a toddler is just as a simple sticker work! Just a plain piece of paper and some dot stickers — no direction on where to place them on the paper, just a blank canvas as an introduction to stickers and some fine motor work involved in all of that peeling and sticking.
Once your child is ready for more, introduce some directed ways to use the dot stickers! You can do this by simply drawing circles or dots on the paper for him to put the stickers onto, or by starting with some pre-writing lines. My favorite way to do this is on a huge sheet of butcher paper taped up to the wall! Draw some lines horizontally, vertically, diagonally, and starting to curve — this will prepare your child for some of the lines she’ll need to use when forming letters.
Once your child is already working on letter shapes, write her name on a piece of paper and use some of those smaller dot stickers to trace along the lines of her name.
The many colors of dot stickers also make them a great material to use for color matching! Take a piece of paper and put one of each colored dot sticker in a line. Then hand your child the matching pairs and let her match them below the first line!
Once your child has her color matching down, it’s time to work on patterns! You can use these free pattern strips along with your colored dot stickers to continue the pattern.
You can even incorporate dot stickers into your art appreciation curriculum by studying the art of Yayoi Kusama and creating your own installation art like Ashley Speed of @ashspeedteaches did here:
Over in your language section, dot stickers make a fun way to spice up some of that beginning sound work! Write a letter on each dot sticker, then let her use them to label things in the room with those beginning sounds.
If you have a child who is already starting to read, use them to count sounds in a word or for marking syllables! Place a dot sticker beneath each sound in c-a-t or beneath each syllable in longer words.
For some beginning math work, dot stickers make excellent counters for your cards and counters work! You could even use them to make cards like this.
For older children who are working on the colored bead stair, bead stickers are an excellent way to extend that work while also working on fine motor skills! I made this free printable to be used with the 1-inch dot stickers to make a mini bead stair, and you can download it below!
The Dot Stickers Bead Stair Template is available as a free printable for my email subscribers only! To gain access to this and all of my other subscriber-only freebies, get on my email list HERE and I’ll send the link and password right over!
If you are already an email subscriber, yay! The latest password can be found in the email from me that went out on the first Wednesday of the month. The password changes each month, so make sure you check the one from this month to get it! Enter the password HERE.
You must be logged in to post a comment.