It's fair to say that vinyl is back and for the most part better than ever. While there is no way to reasonably replace all that comes with digital listening, be it podcasts, live shows or the sheer availability offered by services like Spotify, there are many benefits to vinyl that can help to get your kids focused on the good stuff. Most importantly you get to focus on actual albums instead of singles, and you don't skip over the fluff quite as easily.
The problem of course is that a vinyl collection can get rather expensive, and unlike digital needs a certain amount of care to maintain its function. That is obviously not something that goes well with youngsters, so we came up with the perfect replacement: Kids Record Sleeves. There is a small amount of work at first but it can be a fun project that you can do with or without your little ones.
Things you will need: Colored printer, Laminator, Laminator Sheets, Scissors.
Now based on the size of your collection the prep work can be quite extensive, the good news is we are making these for kids, so you don't need to make copies of all your Steel Panther albums, unless you want to of course. Say you are just starting out, just pop out all the Beatles records you have and you're good to go. The process is simple. Track down a copy of the album artwork online, you can try to maintain a uniform size in the images you find, or simply set up a template in your favorite editing software. Depending on the size you end up with you can possibly print for images on one piece of paper. Just remember you are making these kid sized, basically the size of an old CD case.
Once you have printed all the albums you want to share with your kids, cut them to size and laminate them individually. If you want the full experience don't forget to also include an image of the record's back when you laminate. That's really all there is to it. Now your kids can help pick out what albums they want to listen to during music time or they can look through them and smile just like their parents do.
I'd give a strong recommend to the great website discogs.com for your album art hunting.
