Let's talk Printing, Binding and Laminators - Getting Ready for School
I’ve seen a lot of people out there that are homeschooling and are wanting to print their own materials from PDFs rather then buying books and having them shipped.
So let’s talk about what I did this year and see if it helps you.
First off, I’m a momma that needs good, simple and lasting. I’m pretty all over the place and as you can see, not super put together or really have a home school “room”. We just use our kitchen table (where the lamination has saved books from water and food stains ALREADY) and needed a good system that would be great for on the go, easy to pull out and put up, and handle the rough hands of an 8 and 5 year old. I will update at the end of the year on how this worked for us, but in week 3 this has been going super well.
First let’s talk printers, because that is the biggest part of this whole thing. We decided to get the Eco Printer ET-4760 and man am I so thankful that we did.
**The only difference from the 3760 is that the 4760 can fax and has a larger paper holding tray. I decided if I was going to pay a lot for a printer I wanted to go with the fax one incase we ever needed it. I wanted the option. If you don’t care about the faxing then I recommended the 3760.
I love the colors, the amount it is about to do with so little ink and the ability to print from my phone if needed. You are also about to PRINT DOUBLE SIDED. Very impressed with the over all process.
When it comes to paper I used the 32 for almost everything. I just really love how it feels and looks, plus it is better for water colors too. All those pages were double sided. I did also use 20 for just every day papers for the littlest to color and for the Square foot Garden pre reader book. Those I used 20 with I didn’t double side. I’ve heard many really like 28, so that might be a great option rather then 32. I just joined the subscribe and save on amazon.com to get paper sent over 3 months since we do monthly unit studies.
I then laminated the cover and back page with this (under $25) laminator . There are a lot of different sheets out there though I did get these if you want help picking. Pro Tip If you want to write their names on the books do so before you laminate the cover.
Then with the ProClick P50 I was able to quickly punch the pages even with it only doing six at a time. The laminated covers are did on their own.
So many said to get the Swingline GBC Binding Spines to go with it, but I must have gotten at bad batch. Mine keeping doing this. I found that these GBC Binding Spines work better for me. It really doesn’t take much time to put the binding on.
Even the smallest amount of pages doesn’t work with these, they just kept opening. It could be a bad batch, but I was very unimpressed.
Below is a little TikTok video showing you me using everything!
Please ask any questions you have in comments!
I’ve teamed up with some other mamas to share some amazing back to school content. Check them out below by clicking on the images to take you to their blog post!
