My Five Most Invaluable Items to use in homeschooling: #4 A Color Printer
The simple addition of a color printer can brighten your day. Homeschooling is a learning adventure and journey. This is not limited to your children. It extends to you too, in so many ways. You research what to teach your children, how to reach them when they struggle, and how to keep yourself motivated. One of those ways for me, was by adding color to our papertrail.
Black and white are striking opposites. They are clear and distinct. They can also become bland and boring, and lack warmth and allure. By simply adding color to my planner, it invites me to open it and record the adventures of our day. For my children, I print pages for them to write on, some of which have colored borders. I am able to create and print in-color workbooks for different subjects for them, which they enjoy looking through. (Frankly, sometimes the initial enjoyment of perusing them diminishes with the actual use of these books because drive and enjoyment in anything is a choice, and filling in questions on social studies can be seen as dull no matter how many hues of the rainbow are on the page.)
When the time came that we considered purchasing a color printer, we opted for a laser printer instead of one with ink despite the higher cost, because our experience with ink printers was that our historic lack of frequent use meant that the ink would get dry, stick in the nibs, and so lead to a destroyed printer. They have made great advances in ink printers in that regard but that was after we got the laser one, so I can’t make any comment on them, aside from this one thing: cost-wise, ink printers seem to run cheaper than laser printers up front but their running costs like ink are more expensive. I have been pleased with our choice.
Color brings to life photographs, pictures or paintings enclosed in workbooks, which is invaluable. With the need to print things anyway as homeschoolers, the cost of adding color to what we print and use is a relatively small price to pay for the rewards and versatility it brings.
