You can tell a lot about a speech language pathologist by the size of their laminator. Well, at least I have a special love for laminators. I started in grad school with rolls of cloudy/clear contact paper. This was back in the days of the old Linguisystem SPARC books and I’d stay up late in my dorm coloring articulation cards using my 48 box of crayons I purchased for that purpose. I even got a “skin color” crayon add on pack to make sure I was demonstrating diversity in my cards. Then I’d try to laminate it, but the contact paper would roll up or get stuck to my arm or get a big annoying bubble right in the middle of my newly colored picture of “THERMOS.” I laminated a little-probably cursed a lot.
Eventually I graduated to a roll laminator. It worked great, but velcro didn’t stick to the back of roll laminated stuff. Somewhere in this house I still have my “laminating kit” with a few velcro loop-backed scraps and sandpaper to rough up the back of the laminated paper so you could add velcro onto them. Then I heard from a friend of mine that pouch laminators were better-you didn’t need to sand the back and you could even take them into the pool with you several times before they would start to disintegrate. (One of my first jobs allowed me to do pediatric aqua therapy at a local fitness club. I used a kickboard with velcro on it to create visual schedules for the pools. Pool therapy seemed like the best idea when I started, but mostly it involved trying to do speech therapy with a kid while creepy strangers in speedos watched me from a hot tub.)
Now I have a fancy laminator that allows me to laminate up to 7mm thickness, a laminator that lets me make stickers or magnet sheets AND a tiny sticker laminator for tiny laminating emergencies. Which brings me to New Year’s Resolution #2: Stop being a materials hoarder. I’ve purchased many packets from fellow speech language pathologists on Teachers Pay Teachers as well as enjoyed the FREEBIES that have been offered. But then I forget to print them out. So that’s my goal for this weekend. Print out and laminate the rest of the TPT packets I purchased.
How about you, have you got all of your materials organized?
Here’s a bonus I saw on Pinterest last year:
