How to Prep a Gather 'Round Unit (or other self printed curriculum) at Home

hey everybody it's Macon Phillips here from homeschool 101 I was just working on prepping our next unit study and I have all of my supplies out so I thought I would just take a second and show you the things that I use um and right now we are using the gather round cool and we are getting ready to start the space unit which my kids are super excited about and there are a lot of things out there right now that you can buy in PDF form and by the electronic copy and then you have them so for me it's perfect because I have four kiddos so as we rotate through the unit right now I have one in upper elementary I have one that is in the early reader level and I have one in the pre reader level and then my littlest guy who is sitting at the end of the table eating a chocolate bunny is not even in school age yet and so as we rotate through the units I'll be able to go back in print these at the next level when we need them and I already have them so there are a lot more companies that are going to digital options gap around is one of them you can buy them in print if you want to but you can also buy their digital copies and then more has tons of stuff that you can buy digitally the good and the beautiful there's lots of stuff out there gather round is what we use and what we love right now so that's kind of what I'm going to what I'm going to show you so some of this stuff is optional and some of it is kind of not it just depends but this is the way that I like to do things for the first thing that you're going to do is you're gonna print your unit whatever it is that you're doing you're gonna print I have an old brother color printer that has like the fax and scanner and copy machine all-in-one kind of thing and there's nothing magic or special about it it's one that we've had forever but it works for my teachers guys I usually a slightly heavier weight of paper so that you don't get as much if you have a picture here then when you go to the next page it hopefully doesn't show through any much when it's sitting in my book because I'm gonna keep my teacher's guide so that we can use it again my husband's leaving from work that's our driver alarm if you can hear it in the background for my kids books I use a much more standard weight of paper because they're gonna write in this I'm going to keep a few pages kind of for a sample and then the rest of its probably gonna end up in the trash at some point so I don't want to spend time and money on paper for them is your chocolate bunny yummy so I print theirs on on a lower weight of paper super popular printers would be that's an eco tank that has a lot of ink usage and cheaper ink refills before you run out Canon has a one that has a large capacity eight whatever you want to use you're gonna print your stuff first for mine I print our covers on cardstock and the same thing for my kids their cover page is on cardstock then the thing that I do that's super helpful with having multiple kids because obviously the front of their books all looks the same instead of printing in the case of gather round the cute little back that goes with it that I do for mine each of my kids is a different color so my oldest is green my second is blue and then my third is pink so that way then they're all sitting in our little work caddy I can easily glance and know whose is whose just by that cardstock back so I don't print the back of theirs every kid has a color when my next school guy has his own book he'll have a color too and that way it's just easy at a glance to tell whose work is whose okay so once you've copied then that's all I do for my kids is cardstock front and back for my teachers guys that I know I want to keep I'm gonna laminate my covers okay always that I'm gonna laminate my front and back covers with lamination okay and I use this is the laminator that I use this is a swing mine no this is a scotch man they're um and I bought it for about 20 dollars okay this is a super old version I've had this probably something started teaching so this is probably almost 15 years old maybe twelve years old and it works great I've never had a problem with it buy the cheap one by the Scotch $20 one by the Amazon basics $20 one you don't need a fancy laminating machine the other thing that I buy and if I always have two sizes of laminating pouches not two sizes too big advantage okay this is a three mil laminating pouch and then I always have five mil laminating pouches as well this is a 5 ml lamination I don't want it to be easily bent I want it to be able to stay kind of nice and solid and hold up my book if I'm doing something that is probably not as important or I know it's probably only going to be used temporarily I use the the threes the other thing is I always buy the generic laminating pouches and I'll link to the ones that I like to use and I've never had an issue with them I've never actually bought libri them like Scotch laminating pouch just to compare them to I've always only had these and I've used literally hundreds of laminating pouches and never had a problem with the generic ones so that's what I use for laminating super cheap usually you can buy an attack 100 and when you buy in the first time you're like oh my gosh I'm paying this much for laminating pouches but they last a long time and then whatever you laminated last driver - so for me it's totally worth worth the money to do that so I laminate my covers on mine and then your laminating sheet is always going to be oversized so I like to trim mine down you could totally do it by hand with scissors but I much prefer to use a paper cutter this if you are new to homeschooling will save you tons of time in the long run and again mine is a simple this is a Fiskars brand one and it's really easy I grab it all the time just two quick cuts up out that I want to be nice and have a nice crisp edges so for me a paper cutter is not a huge investment it's not like the super nice folding one if you've used one like it's school or an office supply store but this definitely does the job again I probably have this as long as I've had my laminator Deborah sharpened it never done anything with it and it always works really great then the last step is binding your books you can take your books if you don't want to do the investment in a binding machine you can take your books to your local office supply store and probably have them bound for three to four dollars a book depending on where you go and that's what I did for a really long time before I made the investment in the binding machine the problem is you take all this stuff in you give it to them in my case I always had to leave it at least overnight so that you don't have your stuff immediately and I wasn't going to take in a small flip books like my my kindergarten age daughter has a little color book that I made her and it's a short little binding and it's like five sheets of paper that I bound together I'm never gonna go to Staples and pay like four dollars to have that down but if I have all the stuff sitting in my basement I totally will and it's totally worth it so what I bought was this guy can you see him yep true by SB 20 binding machine okay this I watched forever and ever and ever and debated about what I wanted and I went back and forth the other super common option that you see is the proline no swing line crow flick is what it's called it's a little usually it's like a little teal one and you put your papers in and you zip through it and it punches them you get the same punch pattern I ended up going with this for two reasons one this was up to 20 pages at a time a pro click only does six and I know people that have them say it goes super fast once you get in the rhythm of it it really doesn't take that long but I definitely like the idea of doing being able to do 20 pages at the time the other thing that I like about this is I watched the Amazon warehouse seals and I got this for only slightly more than what a pro click costs I watched literally every day I got on I bought this at like 3:00 in the morning I was up feeding my youngest and I just happened to check and there was one I had saved some Amazon credits and I think I got it for like $80 I bought it in the middle of the night and I never looked back and it's been a really good investment it's definitely an investment and but for me long term I know it's going to pay for itself I love being able to do this and sit here in just a few minutes punch everybody's pages and it's done ok so you put the handloom it punches your pages and you're good to go you can make adjustments here hang on where you want your fletchling [Music] so this has been a huge benefit to me they do have some that have the automatic oiler on top you do not need to pay the premium for the automatic oiler my kids love putting in their own spirals it's like their favorite part of the whole process they always request to be able to put in their own spirals cuz it's fun to just spin them through and then they just go and it's it's fun um so I have this the other thing if you get a binding machine like this is you want to make sure you get lessee you want to make sure you get the little pliers that go with it these crimp your ends so when you get your binding all the way through you set it down you crimp the end and then you have this nice little fold so that it doesn't immediately come on land so these some come with them but just double check and make sure if it doesn't come with the little crimpers you want to get your solitaire because these are like probably less than ten dollars and you really need them to finish this off nicely the other thing that you want to think about regardless if you get a true binder if you get a proclick you're gonna have to get spiders the first time I went to look at spirals this is actually more where I debated giving the binding machine than the actual thing because I thought oh my gosh I'm gonna have to get like 27 different sizes of spirals and so far in the almost three years that I've had this I've bought three coil sizes I have three sizes I have one size that's bigger than this these are 8 millimeter which fold up to 45 sheets these are the little skinniest ones there are smaller ones but this is a skinny in size I have so even my kindergartner her book was able to be done with the size of spirals so I used those fairly frequently or again little light flip books and stuff the eight millimeter ones are super common you always have to buy a box of 100 that's what I would like do I really need it but it's fine they're not that expensive I won't have them forever it's gonna be a long time before I have to reorder spirals the other one these are twelve millimeter spirals which hold about 90 pages and so that's what I use for my slightly bigger workbooks this is my other commonly used size that I grab and then I also have one that's even a size bigger than this that I have found if you're familiar with like a math UC workbook it's a must bigger spiral but then that's my bigger size if I need something in between I'm not really worried about it you finished your whole chocolate bunny oh I see if I need something bigger than that it's all by something bigger in between size but that's really what I use again some of the stuff is optional and even get a different laminator you can definitely give it a different binding system but if you're going to bind if you're gonna do your own curriculum which a few years ago I would have said I'm not gonna worry about it I'm just gonna buy what I need I'm finding that there is a huge value in being able to get the electronic copies and be able to print the things that I need okay so I'm able to reuse these you know for each level I can go back through the other thing is like my kindergarten age daughter is my one that has some developmental delays so if there's a page in her workbook that I know is gonna be way beyond her and be frustrating to her I can just leave it out I don't have to print it it didn't come already printed I didn't waste that page so that's a super nice thing about being able to do it yourself or like my two-year-old that wants to sit at this table and wants to cut up everything that you hand him I can print him a page a coloring page that goes with each of these then he has his own wage to work on and I don't have a whole book for him so there is a huge value in being able to do your own curriculum if you're looking for a curriculum and you're new to homeschooling or you're looking to make a change this is our third gather around unit is that right we've done North American birds we've got Asia and we are just getting we're just starting space we have absolutely loved this after years of bouncing between all of my kids and trying to figure out how to get each subject dozens each individual person it was just way too much this is so simple and so we just are really liking it if you're looking for something and you haven't heard of gap around if you buy the digital you get the teacher's guide and then you get six levels all the way through free Reader which would be like your preschool early engage all the way through high school there are six levels that you get with the digital and you can pick the levels that you need for your kids and then again have them when you go through the cycle in the long run there's going to be four years of gap around so you'll be able to cycle through every four years if you have questions on curriculum choices if you have questions on how you put things together please leave a comment below I will link Amazon link to all of this stuff if you're in a situation right now where you can't get out necessarily and go buy supplies you should be able to get all these things delivered to your house if you're looking to put together your own curriculum everybody is home right now and for me I don't necessarily feel like I'd have more time for any reason but I know some people are being able to prep and do some of their own things now that they're home so if you have questions on things like that please leave a comment you can also check out the links below and help support our channel a few pennies at a time we always appreciate that and as always thank you so much for watching happy homeschooling

Channel: Megan Phillips

Views: 3,694

Rating: 4.9097743 out of 5

Keywords: how to, curriculum, prep, print, units, unit, home, homeschool, home school, gather, round, around, the, good, and, beautiful, evan, moore, more, digital, pdf, document, documents, organization, organize, prepare, copy, laminte, laminator, lamination, binding, machine, spiral, coil, paper, cutter, printing, printer, epson, eco, tank, canon, cannon, brother

Id: LY54fIRjDU0

Length: 15min 14sec (914 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 14 2020