Okay, so I’ve been printing out our Little Reader flaschards. Laminating them with packaging tape ( my poor man’s laminate :>) and now I have flashcards and not sure how to organize them or where to put them at the moment.
Would love to see some ideas others have incorporated , pictures please… albeit here or on a blog. Need visuals. LOL
Also making your own books. What type of paper do you use. Would like recommendations on a sturdy paper ( have a 4yr old that LOVES to read books and easily bends things).
Would love to see any visuals on that too so I can get a good idea on what you use to make them.
Sorry if this has been asked before. Its late and I need to go to bed and don’t have time to go through the search engine at the moment.
I personally buy tons of page protectors during back to school sales and put them in there to protect them and then place those in a binder or duotag. For larger flashcards I store them in scrapbook paper boxes.
I’m with Waterdreamer - page protectors & binders. This is great too for when your child out grows the book - you just toss out the inserts and re-use the page protectors.
As for flashcards, I’ve only used the YBCR flashcards that come in their own little box. Once in a while I’ll print large sheets off and put them into page protectors and make the flashcards into a book.
Page protectors - they’re awesome…and if you REALLY need the sheets to be sturdy, use cereal box cardboard and insert them behind your printed sheets - you can re-use these too when you grow out of the book.
Thanks for the ideas :>) Yep have lots of sheet protectors. That’s a great idea.
Also have lots of cardboard. For a while I was cutting cereal boxes and keeping the cardboard for other projects. I still have lots left. So glad I kept them.
I used to use contact paper but then when our Walmart quit carrying it a while back.
One day I had packaging tape to send out a package and my light bulb went on and I thought, maybe I could try this. Sure enough it worked. I’m sure its not an original idea but that’s when it clicked for me that I could use it for laminating stuff and it was less expensive.
I’m really really in love with the brillkids binder. It’s seriously awesome. Maybe one day, they’ll make a book version that opens like a book, but the pages are interchangeable, for all the ebooks!
For now, I’m thinking you could make books with packaging tape and cereal boxes, cool!
I’ve been following this thread hoping you’d get some more storage solutions for out of rotation flash cards.
I’ll share my half-baked plan.
I have an IKEA trofast system in our kitchen that functions as our art & education cabinet.
They are easy to label with big letters also. The top two bins are for education. I have each labeled with that child’s name. This is only for stuff currently in use. (the rest of the cabinet holds art supplies and puzzles).
The out of use stuff hasn’t been properly organized, but I plan to purchase some very tall trofast systems to store out of rotation stuff. This has been a long plan for toys too, just haven’t done it yet. The toys in my 4 year old’s room are all in trofast systems and bins as well. I have extra “out of rotation” toys organized in extra bins (just waiting on a trofast frame). So ideally, one day, I’ll have large trofast system holding all the out of rotation stuff. The toy bins will be a cinch to swap out. The flashcards will probably be organized by category or little reader semesters or something, with paperclips (I am completely spacing on the name for the clips that I use that hold larger amounts of paper, they fold over). The white large, but short trofast bins can hold a standard size piece of paper. They also easily hold two brillkids binders with some room to spare on the side.
Yes, I’m hoping to eventually get the brillkids binder. It does look great and honestly I don’t think I can find anything else like it elsewhere.
But for now I’m trying to figure out how to organize the cards I do print out and for the ones that go out of rotation. We live in a small apartment , and am running out of room. LOL
Also making your own books. What type of paper do you use. Would like recommendations on a sturdy paper ( have a 4yr old that LOVES to read books and easily bends things).
I print my books on cardstock, then laminate them. I use a 3 hole punch to put holes in the side & then use cable ties (we call them zip ties) to put them together. I took a picture in case my explanation is hard to understand. It was taken with my dd’s ipod touch so it is not very clear, but it should help you to see what I mean.
We did consider making large sized pages for books, it’s just that we’re not sure how much demand there would be. Problem is that (it seems anyway) not that many people make the effort to print stuff.
Tracy- what I do with mine is slip each set into a ziploc bag. The quart size are just about perfect and they don’t damage the cards in any way (like a rubber band or paper clip), they almost are long enough to zip but not quite. It’s enough to keep them separated by subject and that’s what matters. Then I file them in one of the deep drawers in my rolling school supply carts. I am up to 3.5 carts…2 narrow & 1.5 wide. The width of the narrow carts are the perfect size for filing LR printed cards “standing up,” I just use one of the the deep drawers. You can see one of the BrillKids flashcards standing up in the middle cart.
I will try to take a pic soon for you! I have a pic of my set up but not one up close of the flashcards…Okay, I just found the pic on the hard drive. It was before I reorganized everything and I have definitely outgrown this set up since them. I just did some major spring cleaning and got rid of a ton of extra, unnecessary kitchen stuff…so I could clear out a cabinet for school supply storage. lol My husband can only take so many clear rolling carts in the house. I have since moved the two narrow ones into a closet and only the wide one sits out. The drawers are divided with the kids’ daily subjects and regular school work/most frequently used items.
Wow TMT I wish I could be that organized. I am possibly getting two large bookshelves for free tomorrow. If so I might finally be able to organize my stuff.
I also use big ziplock bags, super handy and cheap.
here’s a pic of the flashcards filed away. as you can tell, I previously used bands to keep them together until I realized that the card stock did not hold up well to it. I have since switched to ziploc bags.
Edited to add: This is the only cart I have out in open view these days, the other two narrow ones are tucked away in a closet. This one has the kids daily “school” lessons and then the other daily/almost daily subjects we do. The narrow carts have more arts and crafts/playdough/crayons that we pull out randomly. It a bit less visual clutter so I am happy with the change. I moved the location too so I was able to add on the wheels and can move it around as needed.
I just did some major spring cleaning and got rid of a ton of extra, unnecessary kitchen stuff…so I could clear out a cabinet for school supply storage. lol My husband can only take so many clear rolling carts in the house. I have since moved the two narrow ones into a closet and only the wide one sits out. The drawers are divided with the kids’ daily subjects and regular school work/most frequently used items.