The Lamination Addiction

Red Fish playing a new game.  New Fish trying her best to distract.

*I apologize that these photos are pretty underwhelming and do not really illustrate the true expanse of my addiction.  It's much more serious than the photography acknowledges.

A couple of years ago I got a laminator.  I was making file folder games for Red Fish for Christmas and getting things professionally laminated is almost prohibitively expensive.  Once I got my hands on bulk lamination pockets and a machine of my own, a sickness overtook me.  I became completely addicted to making and laminating things.  I ended up making 60 file folder games for Christmas, complete with velcro. There are games for matching, counting, reading, sorting, pattern making, letter recognition, shapes, colors etc.  My kids adore them and play with them on a regular basis.

Some of our 60+ file folder games

 Then a friend invited me to joing a family home evening lesson swap group.  It had all of these lovely rules about having fun props, games etc. that would hold up to a lot of use and abuse.  I was stoked.  It fell perfectly in line with my new goal to create memorable, consistent, weekly evenings to share gospel messages and have fun with my family.  Unfortunately the group never materialized.  I decided to work hard on really well prepared lessons I could cycle through with my own family and it became my Sunday afternoon activity.  (I took a hiatus from this when I was helping my grandpa write and publish his life history.)  Two years later, I have a MASSIVE family home evening kit.  We should be prepped for the next 5-10 years.  It is all laminated.

There are over 100 lessons. (Many of the lessons are from here, here & here.) Most of the lessons are in page protectors, with signs and quotes laminated to hand around. They fill three, 3-inch binders completely. There are stick puppets (many taken from here) and illustrations for the lessons.  Most have games and trivia cards.  (The trivia cards are much too hard for my girls right now- most of the lessons have to be simplified for use right now.)  I have an entire collapsible file of interactive pieces and a plastic bin of cards and games.  Laminated, laminated, laminated.  I also made two more of these kits as gifts.

My Family Home Evening Kit

 

The latest project is to try and institute a chore system in our household.  My cute visiting teacher and neighbor made these charts for my girls.  They have pictures velcroed on.  When they do a chore they pull of the picture and put it in the pocket.  Right now their chores will include: Get dressed, make bed, brush hair and teeth. It also includes a "helping chore" which is something they do in the house to help me and a "secret service chore" which is something they do nice for someone in the house.  I have a plan to also post a chart with extra things they can do to earn money.  I don't want them to think they get paid for EVERYTHING but I also want them to get familiar with money and how to use it responsibly, taking their age into account.  So I'm hoping that offering extra chores for money will accomplish that.  Of course, the new chart will be fully laminated.

You would think that all of these projects would have fulfilled my need to laminate.  Not so. Every time the girls want to learn something, I think of a way that project needs something laminated.  Need to learn how to recognize the numbers 1-100 because you can count that high?  Need a game to learn some new nursery rhyme songs? The lamination must not stop!

Red Fish playing a number recognition game