File Folder Game Tips

After making a bunch of these the past few weeks, I thought I'd share what I've learned.

I bought 2 books from Carson-Dellosa, which require coloring, cutting, mounting, and laminating. This is a lot of work! I also bought 2 of the ready made sets, which turn out to be pretty expensive, but you do have the coloring already done and the inside of the folders mounted. I think I ended up getting the books for 12 dollars, and they each have approximately 40 games. The ready-made sets come with I think 6 games for $20. You do have to factor in the cost of folders, etc. but the books still come up to be a much better deal if you have the time to devote to it.

I took one of the books to Staples and had them copy all of the pieces (not the mounts) onto card stock. This cost about $15. If you want to have your pieces on card stock, I highly recommend this method. It saved so much time!

The thing with file folder games is you end up cutting out the same pieces several times. First you color it and cut it out. Then you mount it on card stock and cut it out. Then you laminate it and cut it out. Having it copied on to card stock cuts out one of those steps. I have started taking a few short cuts along the way though. So, I tear the page out of my book and color it. Then I laminate the whole page without cutting anything out. Then after it's laminated I cut the individual pieces out. Yes, this isn't quite as sturdy as the other way, but I figure since this will be home use rather than classroom use it will be just fine. So, that's my biggest tip.

I've been struggling trying to figure out a way to laminate the whole folder and spent the day searching the internet for a larger machine. I found the candidate for us, but in the meantime I had games to laminate! I tried Contact paper on several of them with varying degrees of success. Yes, they're protected but not very pretty. I finally took a laminating pouch and stuck one half of the file folder in it and laminated it. Then I took another pouch with the other half of the folder in it and laminated. Then I turned it inside out and ran it through the machine again to insure adhesion to all sides. It worked like a charm! There's about 1/4 inch that hangs out the top, and the same about of the tab sticks out. Next time I'll just trim a bit of the tag off. It looks so nice and was relatively simple, especially compared to the Contact paper. I'm feeling quite pleased with myself at this point.

Tomorrow I'm going to try putting a few of the pages in one of the kids boxes and let them color them. Then I'll mount them and make up the game. That way I don't have to color it and they get an extra exposure to the subject matter.