When I was a teacher, I was the Laminator Queen. I laminated EVERYTHING.  I love how it looks and I love how it lasts.  It is great now especially because so many things I laminated as a teacher are still in beautiful shape and I can use them with Caroline.

Since I can’t justify buying a big, professional laminating machine for just using at home, I purchased a smaller one to use with various craft and learning activities with Caroline.  We’ve done all kinds of things with it and I plan on using it to make some little Christmas presents as well.  I also anticipate the laminator will get lots of use when we start getting into pocket charts such as this:

and this:

Oh, pocket charts!  There’s another post!  LOL!

Love it! 

I can officially call this a big hit with Caroline.

Now that I know she likes it, I’ll look into the other related ones as well.  Thanks very much for the recommendations! I’ll be checking out some of the others soon!

I also purchased the LeapFrog Word Whammer Fridge Phonics today.

We already had the LeapFrog Fridge Phonics Magnetic Alphabet Set and it helped Caroline learn her letters very early on.  But she has shown such an interest in words and spellings lately that I knew it was time to move her along to something more challenging.

We never really sat down and taught Caroline her ABC’s.  It just happened because we provided lots of interesting materials for her to use.  We used them with her, to be sure, but she was mostly self-taught.

I saw these Baby Einstein Alphabooks when I was pregnant and I thought they were the cutest things.

I love little books in boxes so this was right up my alley. I didn’t buy them until after Caroline was born, but they were a great purchase.  She has used them time and time again.  We’ve probably had them well over a year and a half and she still regularly sits down and goes through them.

There is a little board book for each letter of the alphabet.  Each book has three words and a related photograph, work of art, or graphic.  They were also a great vocabulary tool as we talked about what was in each of the pictures.

Cute, compact, and clever.  Just what I like! 

I found this little gem today at Michael’s (the craft store).

They have a new aisle at our store that is something or other about deals under $5.  This ABC puzzle was just $1.  The letters are glittery and there are little cut outs for each letter making it easier for small hands to remove the pieces.

Underneath each piece is a sentence that says something like “A is for apple.”  The uppercase A and the lowercase a are both in color to stand out.

A great learning tool for just a buck! 

Like many little ones, Caroline is fascinated by stickers.  I found this sticker book and it was a fabulous teaching tool!

We garnered hours and hours of learning time from this one book. I actually should say David did because this was an activity that primarily David did with Caroline after supper while I was walking.

The sticker book offered the opportunity to work on motor skills.  Peeling and working with those little stickers is a great exercise for a toddler.  Caroline’s skills in this area improved significantly over the weeks we used this book.

It was a great discussion tool.  The book covers the subjects of ABC, Animals, Colors, Mix and Match, Numbers, Shapes, Sizes and Words.  Every time we put stickers in the book, we discussed the objects and/or concept on the page.  We used it as a launching pad for going above and beyond what was on the page.

The book is colorful with large pictures and stickers.  Everything is labeled so it is possible to use it for print awareness as well.  Now that the book is completed, it is in Caroline’s book basket in the living room.  She still looks at it every day even though it was completed weeks ago.

I really enjoy using sticker books as fun teaching tools and am currently on the lookout for the next one!