I am now the proud owner of my very own laminating machine. I know–exciting, right? With this little beauty, I can now make activities that might actually stand a chance of surviving the sticky fingers of this house.

Here’s my new baby:

Ta-da!

I got mine at Target for like $28.00. Loved that price tag. And, so far, it’s worked really well! It heats up quickly and then you just stick whatever you want laminated in one of these:

Laminating pouches.

You send it through the machine, do any trimming or cutting necessary, and you have yourself some wonderful plastic-coated items! My husband’s just lucky he didn’t come home to find everything in the house laminated. It’s a joy to use.

My laminator joy brings us to another love of mine: the amazing materials found at Montessori for Everyone. The lovely creators of this site have an extensive library of downloads perfect for anyone working at home with their children. All of their items are available for very reasonable rates (most things are less than $5) and they also have an entire section of free downloads. Love these! Here are a that couple I downloaded, printed, and laminated for our preschool shelves, all for free:

Matching the insides of fruits with their outsides. Kind of a fun twist on normal matching activities and the pictures are mouth-watering.

The child sorts through the cards and matches the insides and outsides. This is also a great way to teach the names of different fruits (there are some fun ones in this bunch like star fruit and kiwi).

Here are the control sheets that allow the child to check their own work to see if they got them all right.

Here's another cute one. This activity is great for teaching about groups, sorting, differences, and what makes things similar.

It's your basic "what does not belong" activity, but I just love the gorgeous images. So fun to work with!

The child takes one of the "x" pieces and places it over the item that does not belong with the others in the group. In this case, it was the bird's nest.

Here's Pearl working with the second activity. She watched intently as I laminated it and cut it all apart and then pounced on it, eager to work with it.

I am so grateful that this company is willing to share some of their awesome activities for free. The image quality and the time they have taken to make everything easy to assemble and work with are truly fantastic. I have their catalog and plan on purchasing some of their other sets of activities down the road.

So, take a minute and head on over to Montessori for Everyone–you won’t be disappointed, I promise!

*And, no, they have no idea I even exist nor did they pay me to say any of this. I just love their products!

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