Most people have found Post-It Notes to be useful for jotting down grocery or to-do lists, reminders, and notes for friends or family members. But if you haven’t discovered the power of using sticky notes as bookmarks, you are in for a treat! There are so many reasons I love using them this way, and I hope at least one of them simplifies and streamlines reading for you and your child.

They Keep Your Spot

Regular bookmarks sometimes get pulled out of doing their job by thoughtless toddlers. Or older children mysteriously misplace your entire bookmark collection. If those aren’t issues in your house, gravity most certainly is. Just when you think your place is safely held, books inevitably fall while being shuffled around and you’re left to helplessly watch your bookmark flutter to the floor. Not so with the ingenious sticky strip designed to cling to your page.

Unlike other bookmarks, sticky notes may be used upside down, sideways, or folded. And if you cut a small square notch in the corner, not only will the Post-It Note help you find the last page you read, it can pinpoint the last sentence, nay, the exact word your eyes last beheld. It saves you time and frustration not having to reread an entire page to find your spot again. 

You Can Write on Them

Traditional bookmarks are laminated or decorated with artwork, making it difficult to take notes on. But reading and writing go hand-in-hand. Thus, the Post-It Note is an invaluable tool for readers. If we had our children recording new vocabulary words as they found them, questions regarding the text, or page numbers to show you their favorite parts of a book, reading would become much more interactive, rewarding, and educational. You could even send your child on a scavenger hunt! Write several words down on a sticky note and have your child look for them as they read a book. All they need to do is write the page number on which they find each word. 

They Help You Work Smarter, Not Harder

I didn’t realize until college how life-changing sticky notes could be. If while reading a book I struggled to keep new characters straight, I would write a list or chart of their names and what I knew about them. I would refer to that sticky bookmark instead of having to flip back through all the pages to figure out who had just done what. Sometimes we cram so much in our heads at once, it can’t help but spill out. Catching that detailed information on a sticky note ensures it will be there when we need it most.

Can you imagine how this could help a student in middle or high school thrive in their literature class? Instead of getting to the end of a book and having to go back through to figure out the theme or find certain quotes to support it, your child could be finding these key elements during the process of reading. Taking notes (with page numbers) on their Post-It Note bookmark or leaving sticky notes throughout the book with comments and thoughts written on them will undoubtedly make writing book reports easier and more meaningful. This type of activity allows for more careful reading, deeper comprehension, and increased enjoyment as students search for hidden nuggets like foreshadowing, analogy, or irony.

Lastly, I have even seen visual learners map out ideas on different colored sticky notes, then affix them to a desk or wall in an arrangement that makes sense to them. In this same manner, breaking down a story into its literary elements could be a game changer for our struggling readers. This would make it possible for them to see the story in a new format, one that is easier to comprehend.

I wish to publicly thank the inventor and the manufacturer of Post-It Notes for designing such a versatile and useful tool for reading and learning. And I hope you and your children enjoy trying out sticky notes as bookmarks. Let me know what you think of these ideas in the comments!

Photo by AbsolutVision on Unsplash