 |
| An airplane winner! |
.Melissa and Doug Reusable Stickers
started out as one of my top picks for travel (big thanks to the readers who suggested them!), but have actually turned out to be one of Toddler X's favorite "toys", period, over the past few weeks. The amount of play -- and good creative/inventive play -- we've gotten out of a $4.99 book of movable stickers and background scenes is incredible. They've kept him entertained on our flights to/from Texas last month, at the airport, and whenever we needed some quiet play during the trip (restaurants especially). But what's more, he's continued to play with them constantly since we got home (it's a blissfully QUIET, CALM activity, and those of you who know Toddler X know that's hard to come by for us!). He even insisted that we bring them over to Grandma and Pops' house so they could play with them too.
We bought the Habitats
version of these stickers before a Disneyland trip last year (animal stickers, various habitat backgrounds), and Toddler X was lukewarm about them at the time. The "My Town" version, which we got before our Texas trip, is a totally different story. It's full of people, rather than animals, and they're all doing things he knows of or is interested in -- there are firefighters with a firehouse background (and a dog and cat -- his faves!), doctors and patients with a hospital background, kids and playground equipment with a school background, servers and patrons with a restaurant background, and shoppers with a grocery store background. The stickers are super cute and lots of fun to apply and re-apply.
Since he's loved the My Town one so much, Grandma just bought him the Vehicles
version as well, and that's proven to also be a hit (there's a construction page for all those truck lovers!).
My big tip for the Melissa & Doug stickers is this: For each page of stickers, take a moment before you give them to your toddler, and peel away all the blank areas bordering the stickers -- the outlines/background (be sure to check that you're not peeling away/throwing out any small stickers). Toddlers will have almost an impossible time getting the stickers out with the border in place, but can get them off the sheet easily if the surrounding border is gone.
Also, be sure to keep both the background sheets and the sticker sheets as flat as possible -- I rolled up a few of the backgrounds to fit in Toddler X's backpack for our last Disneyland trip, and they never quite recovered.
We take all the sheets apart so that he can play with them in the car or at a restaurant without having to spread open the whole book, but we store them in the book to keep them flat and prevent stickers from falling off.
Oh, and they work great on windows and mirrors too -- lots of fun for hotel rooms!
The ONLY negative is that the sheets are large -- 11 x 14 inches. (Hilariously, Toddler X was playing with a yard stick right before he went to bed, and it and the sticker book were sitting next to each other on the play room floor, just begging me to measure!) They're not easy to throw in a purse, though they fit fine in an adult backpack. But size them any smaller, and you lose the benefit of the big backgrounds...overall, I'll take them as they are.
Anyhow, I feel like these are a GREAT find for older toddlers (I'd say some will enjoy as young as age 2 -- for Toddler X, it was definitely more a 3 year old thing) because they're simple, promote creative play, and are SO DARN CHEAP! They'd also be very inexpensive, but really high quality, birthday gifts for friends -- they have a much higher play value than their cost would suggest.
The My Town one is our current favorite, but they also have Habitats, Vehicles, a Play House (I'm ordering that one for our next trip), Fairies, a Princess Castle and more.
Hope your kids enjoy these as much as mine does!
Please note that this post contains affiliate links. If you choose to shop online for these or any other items, I would greatly appreciate you doing do via these links -- it helps me out, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!
started out as one of my top picks for travel (big thanks to the readers who suggested them!), but have actually turned out to be one of Toddler X's favorite "toys", period, over the past few weeks. The amount of play -- and good creative/inventive play -- we've gotten out of a $4.99 book of movable stickers and background scenes is incredible. They've kept him entertained on our flights to/from Texas last month, at the airport, and whenever we needed some quiet play during the trip (restaurants especially). But what's more, he's continued to play with them constantly since we got home (it's a blissfully QUIET, CALM activity, and those of you who know Toddler X know that's hard to come by for us!). He even insisted that we bring them over to Grandma and Pops' house so they could play with them too.We bought the Habitats
version of these stickers before a Disneyland trip last year (animal stickers, various habitat backgrounds), and Toddler X was lukewarm about them at the time. The "My Town" version, which we got before our Texas trip, is a totally different story. It's full of people, rather than animals, and they're all doing things he knows of or is interested in -- there are firefighters with a firehouse background (and a dog and cat -- his faves!), doctors and patients with a hospital background, kids and playground equipment with a school background, servers and patrons with a restaurant background, and shoppers with a grocery store background. The stickers are super cute and lots of fun to apply and re-apply.Since he's loved the My Town one so much, Grandma just bought him the Vehicles
version as well, and that's proven to also be a hit (there's a construction page for all those truck lovers!).My big tip for the Melissa & Doug stickers is this: For each page of stickers, take a moment before you give them to your toddler, and peel away all the blank areas bordering the stickers -- the outlines/background (be sure to check that you're not peeling away/throwing out any small stickers). Toddlers will have almost an impossible time getting the stickers out with the border in place, but can get them off the sheet easily if the surrounding border is gone.
Also, be sure to keep both the background sheets and the sticker sheets as flat as possible -- I rolled up a few of the backgrounds to fit in Toddler X's backpack for our last Disneyland trip, and they never quite recovered.
We take all the sheets apart so that he can play with them in the car or at a restaurant without having to spread open the whole book, but we store them in the book to keep them flat and prevent stickers from falling off.
Oh, and they work great on windows and mirrors too -- lots of fun for hotel rooms!
The ONLY negative is that the sheets are large -- 11 x 14 inches. (Hilariously, Toddler X was playing with a yard stick right before he went to bed, and it and the sticker book were sitting next to each other on the play room floor, just begging me to measure!) They're not easy to throw in a purse, though they fit fine in an adult backpack. But size them any smaller, and you lose the benefit of the big backgrounds...overall, I'll take them as they are.
Anyhow, I feel like these are a GREAT find for older toddlers (I'd say some will enjoy as young as age 2 -- for Toddler X, it was definitely more a 3 year old thing) because they're simple, promote creative play, and are SO DARN CHEAP! They'd also be very inexpensive, but really high quality, birthday gifts for friends -- they have a much higher play value than their cost would suggest.
The My Town one is our current favorite, but they also have Habitats, Vehicles, a Play House (I'm ordering that one for our next trip), Fairies, a Princess Castle and more.
Hope your kids enjoy these as much as mine does!
Please note that this post contains affiliate links. If you choose to shop online for these or any other items, I would greatly appreciate you doing do via these links -- it helps me out, at no additional cost to you. Thank you!
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar