Tuesday’s Tip: Why you’ll love a laminator

One invaluable tool that I have had on hand for several years is an at-home laminator. I have found so many uses for it when homeschooling, as well as for business and home management.

For homeschooling, I laminate items such as schedules, timed math fact sheets, rules, chores, geography flash cards, bible verses, and anything that will be used multiple times. We use Vis-A-Vis wet-erase markers to write on our laminated pages because they don’t smear like dry erase markers have a tendency to do.

I bought my home laminator at Walmart for about $27, and the transparency paper to laminate with isn’t that expensive. I think an 8×10 sheet of paper costs about $.65 to laminate at home (less if you buy paper in bulk), but if it’s something you would otherwise have to print out multiple times, it’s definitely worth the expense.

The best thing I’ve used our laminator for in our homeschool this year are the “education” and “responsibilities” cards that came in The Well Planned Day planner I purchased from the Home Educating Family Association at a local homeschool convention.  It has made checking Joel “out” at the end of the day such a simple process!

We use our laminator a lot for our family business as well, and I even find myself using it for things around the house, such as grocery lists, schedules, and inventory lists. I can’t imagine NOT having one now!

Have you discovered a tool that you can’t live without for homeschooling? Do you have a laminator, and if so, what laminated item has had the biggest impact on your homeschool days? Share it with us in the comments below!

— Rosanna Ward is a devoted wife of 19 years and mother of four children, two of which are homeschool graduates. She currently homeschools her 7-year-old son Joel and her youngest son is a toddler. Rosanna is a homeschool graduate and has been homeschooling for seven years. Rosanna loves to study History and Genealogy: Her genealogy blog is called “Rosanna’s Genealogical Thoughts.” She and her family reside in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.