Sticker Activity Books for Girls and Rainy Day Activity Ideas

If the rain is pouring down and you have young children to keep entertained it can be really difficult to stop them becoming bored which often leads to irritability, tantrums and playing up. This is a common problem in winter and at times of the year when the rain just doesn't seem to stop.

So you find yourself limited to indoor activities... The only problem is that most of these activities can lead to complete bedlam... Play-doh trodden into the carpet, paint on the cat and crayon art up the wall... All by about 11.40am! How children do it is a mystery, but you can at least keep them out of trouble for a few one-hour sessions with a sticker activity book. It's amazing how absorbed children become when they have stickers to play with. The books tell a story, or give educational information, and then the child has to work out which sticker goes where in the book. I had loads of these books as a child and I absolutely loved them!

I got my first ever sticker book when I was eight years old. We were on our way to the Dordogne (in the South of France), and it was a very hot, very squashed four hour car journey to the little house we were going to be staying at. My brother was 12 at the time and he has always been blessed with the amazing ability to sleep anywhere... It's genuinely quite remarkable (a bit like a cat I suppose), so that's pretty much what he did the whole car journey. My younger sister and I however, were not quite so easy...

"I Spy" kept us amused for about eleven minutes, so eventually my parents pulled over to try to find something in one of the little tourist shops to keep us occupied for the rest of the trip. My sister got a little pop-up and lift-the-flap book and I chose a sticker book, which was entirely in French, which really doesn't matter when you have stickers! We were happy enough for the time it took us to then get to the house, by which time we were nearly done with our new toys. Thank God we were never sufferers of car nausea! The car ride would have been very different!

These books are full of fun activities, stories and colour - all the things that catch and, more importantly, hold a child's attention. Some of the sticker books are educational and you can find ones to do with history, science and other school subjects that a child may need a little extra help with.

If you are going on a long journey, on holiday or even if you simply work from home and find that you need to buy yourself a quiet hour or two every now and again, activity books are cheap, easy enough for your child to do without requiring help and best of all, children find it an extremely enjoyable, relaxing and engrossing experience. Whilst they don't need help with this kind of thing, it is a really fantastic experience for a child to do something they love (whatever that may be), with one or both of their parents.

When I say "hour or two" - it will actually take a child a lot longer than this to complete the whole thing, depending on which one you decide to buy, but after this time you generally need to get up and move around due to your legs going tingly!

In my experience the book lasts around 5-6 nights (I would do some every evening with my dad right before going to sleep). I can remember so clearly how much I enjoyed completing the books and smoothing the pictures into their correct places... It's strange that such little things can give us such a strong sense of accomplishment...

For some reason, stickers seem to be an ever-popular trend with young children. Whether given by a doctor as a reward for being brave, a parent for helping out with chores or a best friend at school as a friendship token, they seem to hold mystical powers of motivation and encouragement for any given situation.

Another great thing about activity or colouring books, is that they are extremely helpful in getting children enthusiastic about reading and learning. The text in these books is chopped up into tiny paragraphs (perfect for short attention spans), and in-between the blocks of writing, there are stickers, pictures and fun little activities such as mazes, colouring pages and "spot the difference" challenges that young children will find themselves utterly absorbed in.

I find that starting children out with short stories or colouring packs in which they can get involved and take a hands-on approach to completing

This sort of book is fun for children to do alone (which helps them develop independancy and become self-reliant for fun), but it is also a really great project for siblings, parents or friends to join in with, too! Pretty much any theme, subject or colour your child is into right now, you can find it in sticker-book form. They aren't expensive and make great gifts for other children's birthdays too!

Santa Claus nearly always brought me a sticker book at Christmas, and it was one of the first things out of all my other toys that I would start playing with. I was imaginative and I adored anything pink or pretty so my favourites were activity books with fairies, unicorns, princesses or sparkly dresses.

I also have always loved reading, and the story of each sticker book was just as enjoyable as putting all the stickers in the right places. As I got older, I still put sticker books on my Christmas list - but the pink, sparkly things turned to an interest in animals, dinosaurs and historical figures - mainly Kings and Queens, which was a big interest at one point.

When my sister was old enough, she started asking for them too - I think because she liked to copy everything my brother and I did! Anyway, I'm glad she enjoyed them too because it was something we loved doing in each others company - and it's pretty hard to fight with a sibling when you're both engrossed in what you're doing, so we were almost always calm and quiet while we did them... Which I'm sure our mum appreciated!

Apart from being a really relaxing and fun thing to be doing, these gifts were always thought of by me as exciting presents. It didn't matter that they hadn't cost much or that they weren't a huge size, to me they were something I looked forward to getting every Christmas, and something I appreciated as much as some of my other, larger gifts from Santa.