After Sam’s, we went to Walmart. (Again, my mom needed to pick something up. Walmart and Sam’s don’t sell the same things.)

My own son has never, ever liked stickers, much to my dismay. It’s weird because I had assumed everybody liked stickers. But no, he didn’t like them at age three or eight or twelve or now at fifteen. (He doesn’t hate them. He just has no interest.)

So that means nowadays I buy stickers for my little English students. (And yes, the boys are WAY less interested in them than the girls. I have one boy student who even refuses to take one, shrugging them off.)

Japanese stickers are super duper cute. But they have a different vibe than American stickers, so I wanted American stickers for my classroom.

What I purchased. ↑  It ended up costing way more than I expected. (And no, I didn’t just put them in my mom’s cart and let her buy them! After I saw how much they cost, I was glad I didn’t do that.)

Harry Potter. LOVE

These sorts of stickers with pictures of everyday objects are incredibly useful for my class. For example, I can give the students paper and tell them to create a meal on it, using the stickers. Then they have to come to me and say, “I’d like the cookie, please.” “I’d like the apple, please.”

In real life, children will say, “Mama, can I have a cookie?” “I want an apple. Please?” But our class is an artificial environment and I like to use props to get the student to be forced to say the same sorts of things they would say in a natural environment.

Nice. It has words like “April Showers.” Japanese goods OFTEN have English words on them. But Japanese goods rarely have natural sounding English. When I buy something in the U.S., I automatically know the English will be correct and natural, whereas in Japan I examine the merchandise for spelling errors, odd English and so on to decide if it is worth purchasing.