My So-Called Life Part Two

I know I’m sounding like the biggest teacher nerd and oh so lame, but I just spent my Friday evening cutting out laminating. That’s not the saddest part…the saddest part is that that isn’t unusual!  I’m a little bit miffed at myself though because I learned a very important lesson tonight…here’s a little fyi for you…but first I have to preface it…

So, this summer I became a blog stalker, idea junkie, and printing addict.  I swear I probably went through 4 or more (ok I don’t want to admit it but probably more ) ink cartridges for my printer and tons of white cardstock!  Office Max was my escape out of the house. 

I especially loved printing math and literacy games that I wanted to go ahead and create before the school year started.  My thoughts were if I’m going to laminate and have the stuff for awhile, it might as well be pretty, thus the high ink bill.  Back in the day it used to be file folder games that people printed off and then colored in by hand…oh I am so glad that is no more!  So,  a lot of these games I printed off, I only printed off enough for a small group of 5-6 students to complete or work on together at one time.  The games still needed though anywhere from 2 to 6 sets of the same cards/materials.  I love hands on materials and games but I am not a fan of having multiple sets of something and children mixing up all the pieces – that is such a headache! I also started out printing a bunch of go fish cards on colored cardstock, but realized once I was done that you could completely see through the cardstock if you held it up!  Two frustrations = One solution (I’m sure other people do this, but I didn’t think of it until this summer) I decided to back all of my cards/materials I was making for games with scrapbook paper!  Then,  I could also theme my scrapbook paper with the theme of the game! 

These cards don’t have a theme because they are just part of a place value unit.  Isn’t this a perfect way for kids not to get their cards mixed up if they’re in the same center?!  Even if the cards do get mixed up – it’s easy to sort them out! Yes, it’s a little bit of work to do this, but I think in the long run it will pay off.

 

Ok, so here’s the lesson I learned…if your getting tired of cutting all those cards out of the scrapbook paper  - do not decide to just glue a whole sheet of the cards onto one big piece of scrapbook paper and then laminate.  You need to cut each individual card and then laminate.  Why, do you ask? Well, what happens is as your cutting apart your cards that you laminated in a group, the laminating starts peeling away from their edges…which means the cards will have to be laminated once again and then you will have to do even more cutting out of laminating!  Urgh! My hands are tired! Why oh why did I get that bright idea to begin with!  Normally, this would have worked, but because I put two pieces of paper together, there needed to be a better seal.

Live and learn is a motto that I repeat to myself. 

By the way I am super excited about some activities we just did and some others we are going to do next week!  More to come on that.