Laminated License Plate Game


I thought I'd share a quick bonus craft this week. Travel Iowa released a Family Fun Guide to promote county parks in Iowa that had a map of all 99 counties in Iowa for a license plate game. When we drive long distances, we often like to keep track of license plates to pass the time. Since Iowa posts its counties on the license plate, it can add a level of difficulty to your search to keep track of county plates in addition to the states. A quick google search located a Map of the U.S. to put on the other side of my Iowa Map from the Raising Whasions blog. If you're not from Iowa or planning to travel in Iowa, you could put a map of your state to keep track of where you've visited or a Canadian map to keep track of province plates as you see them.


I printed out my two maps on some lightweight (60lb) card stock and slipped it into a laminating pouch with the back sides of each map towards each other and the map sides facing out.


The pouches come in 8 1/2 by 11 size, so it's super easy to laminate full sheets of paper. Just smooth down the laminating plastic and make sure your printouts are lined up (you could print on heavy weight card stock and print on both sides--or use a piece of double stick tape to keep the sheets from getting out of alignment).


I have an older version of the Scotch Laminator, and it works fairly well for home projects. Just pop the pouch in the top and let the machine pull it through and heat as it goes. I often have to run it through a couple times to get the edges to seal well, but it's very easy to use.


Now that my maps are laminated, I can use a dry erase marker (or wet erase/overhead marker if you want to make sure it doesn't wipe off for the whole trip) on it to keep track of the license plates we've seen. 

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