Kaleidoscope Sticker Mosaics

Last month I told you about The Stargazing Dot to Dot Book.  It's one of the activities that Ginny and I like to work on while we listen to stories before bed.  These kinds of drawing/crafting activities will not distract from your ability to listen and engage in a story.  Some studies have shown that doodling appears to enhance concentration!  (Try this article called "Keep Calm and Doodle On" if you'd like more information.)

So, of course, we found some amazing sticker mosaic books on B&N's bargain bin and snatched them up!  This Kaleidoscope Sticker Mosaics book is filled with Wild Creatures.  We also picked up a Neon Nature book.

Each page has the outline of one creature.  This one is a parrot.  If you look closely, you can see that the bird has been sectioned off into little triangular bits.  Each triangle (or other shape) has a letter and number in it. 

At the back of the book, you can find the sticker sheets.  Each of these stickers are lettered and numbered too. 

Place each sticker into its matching spot on the animal, and you will slowly build a beautiful picture!  I have giant sausage fingers, so I have found that using a tweezers to place the pieces really helps.  Ginny just goes for it!

Here's our completed parrot!

Since Ginny and I work on the same picture at the same time, we like to cut the sticker sheets up into smaller bits.  Usually, the pictures have 5 or 6 lettered sections, like A-E, and we cut them out that way. 

Here's a closeup of the flamingo.  You can see that we don't always get all the pieces to match up exactly and that leaves little white spaces between stickers.  Also, some of the smaller stickers and long, skinny triangular stickers don't quite fill the entire space and leave white showing.  This doesn't bother Ginny or I at all, but based on some reviews I read on Amazon, this is very annoying to some people.  So just be aware.

Here's a beautiful hummingbird!  Some of the stickers on this picture were SO tiny!  It creates a beautiful finished picture, but I don't think younger kids could manage these tiny pieces very well.

Ginny and I are both really enjoying this activity and have only one page left to do in this book.  Amazon does carry a Paint By Sticker series with loads of neat animal pictures to create.  We may have to buy some of those too!  There is also a Paint By Stickers Kids series which looks to have big stickers that little hands could manage better.

And in case you were wondering, currently Ginny and I are listening to the second book in a series called the Winternight Trilogy.  Book one was "The Bear and the Nightingale" and book two is "The Girl in the Tower", and they are written by Katherine Ardin.  Book three isn't out yet.  These books take place in old Russia and contain lots of Russian folklore.  I think they are very well written, and the reader from the Audible version is quite good!  But I would recommend them only for older teens or adults. 

Have fun listening to stories and creating little masterpieces together!