Many of us enjoyed collecting things when we were kids, whether it was stamps, football cards, Pogs, Pokémon or of course stickers!
Give a child a sticker book on a long car journey and expect not to hear a peep out of them for the rest of the trip. But what is it about these small, inexpensive pieces of ephemera which utterly captivates and inspires our kids?
They allow kids to express themselves
According to psychologists, children start to develop their own sense of identify from around the ages of 3-6 years old, making choices about what they prefer in terms of things like their favourite colours, toys, foods etc..
Stickers come in an endless array of designs, colours, even textures in shops – therefore children can’t help but be attracted by the shiny packets of stickers that speak to their developing tastes and personalities.Also, in younger children especially, the motor skills required to carefully peel off a sticker from the backing paper, without ripping it, takes a great amount of concentration.
With School Stickers Sticker Maker, you can have a go at designing stickers which appeal to you, your child or your pupils’ personalities. You can add your own background image as well as fully customise the text.
They make kids proud of themselves
Children love to be rewarded for their achievements in school and nothing says ‘a job well done,’ quite like a sticker of a dinosaur saying ‘I’m a Cleversaurus’. For children, the sense of pride that comes with an unexpected reward sticker stays with them for a long while afterwards.
In fact, kids will often keep these tokens of appreciation stuck to the front of their school jumper until the edges of the sticker start to come away and collect fluff.
But stickers can also make children proud of themselves in situations that may, at first, seem scary and unfamiliar to them, like visiting the doctor or going to the dentist. Getting a sticker as a reward for ‘being brave’ during a medical examination can act as a visual reminder to the child that these places aren’t so scary. Hopefully these tokens will act as a reminder for the next time a visit to the doctor or dentist surgery comes around.
They’re fun to look at!
Ask a child why they like stickers so much and they will tell you that besides from looking pretty, a sticker can be stuck anywhere, including places where they shouldn’t (like the back of dad’s shirt before he goes off to work in the morning).
Image: Tate Modern via YouTube
A recent art installation by Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Modern, gallery visitors were given a pack of stickers and told to go ‘hog wild’ on a white room, sticking the coloured circles wherever they wanted in the space. This is exactly what they did, with very vibrant results!
However, thanks to the vast majority of sane parents who would put a stop to that level of sticker vandalism, most children are happy enough to limit their sticker ‘graffiti’ to just their pencil case, lunch box, toy box or sticker album.
If your child or pupils are looking for somewhere to stick their stickers, School Stickers have a varied range of sticker reward charts, which are bound to appeal to individual’s personalities and interests.
If you have any further opinions on why you think stickers are such a hit with kids, then please share your thoughts in comments below.
