Having a laminator at home is kind of like a right of passage for teachers these days. They are inexpensive and allow us to work from the comfort of our own homes (plus it’s super simple to use!).
These lamination hacks for teachers will give you the opportunity to laminate larger items at home and more!
Because I know you’re so stinkin’ excited like me, let’s get started with the 5 lamination hacks I want to share with you.
Before you can laminate at home, you need a laminator. Now I am partial to the Scotch brand of laminators and pouches, but you can purchase any that you’d like. I’ve linked a few of my favorites below:
Supplies Needed:
- Regular Scotch Thermal Laminator (cheapest at Walmart + Target for around $20)
- 200 Pack of Lamination Pouches
- 13″ Thermal Laminator (for file folders)
- Larger Lamination Pouches
If you’d like to watch instead of read to learn about the lamination hacks for teachers, you can watch this video replay:
LAMINATION HACK #1
If you are more of a cut, laminate, cut person (unlike myself), then you will enjoy this hack!
Have ever tried to cut out smaller pieces of anything and then try to laminate them in a pouch, yet have them get all scrambled or move on you mid-lamination… and ruin the whole thing?
I’ll take that head nod as a yes!
All you need is a glue stick for this lamination hack.
Add a dot of glue stick glue to the back of whatever you are trying to laminate…
…then lay it in the pouch.
Arrange your pieces in any order you’d like, then send through the laminator and you’ll find that they all stay in place!
You can find the visual schedule icons here.
LAMINATION HACK #2
Have you ever had something that was too big for a lamination pouch… even the larger ones? And by too big I mean really, really, really long.
This is a hack that I learned from @teachinglifelonglearners on Instagram and it completely blew my mind.
When you laminate at home, the pouches always have a sealed end and an open end. To make this lamination hack work, you have to cut off the sealed portion of the one end of the pouch.
Then take a tiny piece of tape and tape your two lamination pouches together. I like to overlap them just a little bit so they really seal. Then run it through your laminator like normal!
It’s seriously mind blowing that you can now laminate all of your really long resources for your classroom. It’s gives us so much more flexibility with what we can laminate at home now!
You can find this free flippable schedule template in the Resource Library here (shown in the picture above).
You can also use this lamination hack to laminate words for bulletin boards or displays… I mean, seriously! I taped three pouches together to get the “Today is…” for our calendar board ready to use! #mindblown
“Today is…” (as pictured above) is from the Interactive Calendar Routine. You can find it here.
LAMINATION HACK #3
This hack goes along with the lamination hack #2, but just a little different. Let me paint a scenario for you.
You’re prepping writing prompts for the month and you have about 20 pages you need laminated, but you also need to do XYZ. And to laminate at home, you have to feed each individual lamination pouch into the laminator. It’s time consuming!
So save yourself some time. Just like you taped two pouches together in hack #2, you’ll do the same thing with this hack – EXCEPT – you won’t cut the seal off of any pouches.
No need to overlap the pouches, just tape them together and you’re good to go. The tape will come right off once they’re laminated too.
TIP * I don’t recommend taping too many pouches together (no more than 5!)… unless you have a really, really long hallway or room where you can let it run through, HA!
LAMINATION HACK #4
In lamination hack #3, I mentioned how teachers are always strapped for time. We are always looking for ways to add even just a minute of time to our day to allow us to do something else.
This lamination hack for teachers is about to save you a lot of minutes.
Use multiple laminators at once!
I have been known to have 4 or 5 Scotch Thermal Laminators running at once… I know!… and it truly saves me so much time. I can laminate multiple things at once and save myself at least one minute per pouch by just starting up another laminator.
For about $20 a laminator at Target or Walmart, it’s 110% worth the purchase to save myself time. Those extra minutes I am saving myself allow me to do more teacher self care, do less school work at home, have more time with my family… it’s worth it to me.
Your time is valuable. Grab that second laminator!
LAMINATION HACK #5
Dry erase boards are expensive and not all schools provide the smaller dry erase boards for individual student use. It can be costly… until now!
Grab some blank paper… I prefer sheets of Astrobrights cardstock (you can color code!)… put them in a lamination pouch, laminate and voila!
Use the laminated paper as dry erase boards.
I have found that EXPO brand markers work best and erase better than others. To erase the marker from the pouch, I use magic erasers.
LAMINATION HACK #6 AND #7
I can’t believe I forgot to share these two simple hacks with you! You can learn how to laminate stickers with Hack #6 here, and then learn how to use laminated alphabet stickers with Hack #7 here.
What lamination hacks for teachers can you share with us? Let us know in the comments!
Stephany, i cannot thank you enough for all your help and ideas for special ed. I started teaching sped las year in October and needless to say it was chaotic. I didn’t know where to start in terms of the paperwork, organization and IEPs. The kids learned a lot but everything else was mayhem. Thanks to your vlogs and ToT products I am now organized and know what to do. I couldn’t have done it without you!! Thank you from the bottom of my heart!!
Hello! Loved your suggestions! But you’re saying milliliters instead of millimeters!!!
Thank you for the suggestions!
Yep, I’m aware… we’re all human. Thanks for letting me know, I’ll be sure to say it correctly next time 🙂
What do you use the checkmarks (photo) for?
Incentive boards, like the free one in the Resource Library.
Something I learned in student teaching that was brilliant was if you are laminating at school on a big laminator and you want to laminate a large anchor chart that is too wide, fold it in half, laminate it. Then, you cut the fold open and fold the other way and laminate. That time when you cut the fold, it will all be perfectly laminated!
You did blow my mind!!!! Thanks
I have a regular sized laminator that I’ve used for many projects. Want a large one !!!!!
Thank you I did learn something new !!!! Amazing
What size are the larger file folder laminator pouches???
You can find the larger lamination pouches I recommend at any time in my Amazon Shop: http://www.amazon.com/shop/mrsdscorner
I just tried this to laminate bulletin board boarders. It worked fairly taping the pieces together but I had some issues with crinkling. Any tips to avoid that? I tried to make sure they were as flat and lined up as possible. Thanks for all the ideas!
I had the same issue. It crinkled and at times jammed my laminator. I scrolled through to hopefully get some tips on how to fix it.
Really great tips!! But the milliliter thing was driving my teacher brain crazy! It’s millimeter. It’s a measurement of thickness, not volume.
Does anybody have a hack for separating the laminator sheets (before you insert what needs to be laminated)? I don’t know if it’s because my sheets are stored in a very humid garage, or what. But it is almost impossible for me to get the sheets to open up.
Thanks if anybody has an idea.
You, my teacher friend, have just saved me SO MUCH timeeeee!!!! Ahhhhhhh!! Thank you for thisssssss!!!
Tessa
Since you seem to be the Queen of the Laminator tips, I have a how can I challenge. I would like to make a story walk with laminated pages of a book for students. I need to attach them to a stick or metal post to place in the grass. I know I could just tape it on the back, but wondering….Do you think I could place a plastic straw on the back of the card stock, put it in the laminating pouch and send it through the laminator so there is a channel for the post?
What do you mean when you say you are not a cut, laminate, cut kind of person? That’s the only way I’ve seen people laminate, so I’m just trying to see what other ways there are before I start my first year of teaching!
I print, laminate and cut. I did a lamination experiment last summer. You can watch it here: https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17859531781532270/
Hello! Such an informative blog to read! Thank you so much for sharing this topic and for giving me more factors to consider. Keep it up!
I’m first year teacher and these tips were amazing! Thank you so much ❤️
I really enjoyed your video, but I didn’t see you demonstrate cutting out any types of shape after you laminated the project. I made a church fan on card stock and the shape was like square with rounded corners, measure 7.25″x6.5″. I used a 10mil laminated pouch.
( And yes I’m doing it at home .) So my question is can you do a video on cutting out large. A retired educator and doing some projects in my home.
Sincerely appreciate your thoughts.
A retired educator
I wouldn’t cut it any differently, no matter what size the item was.