You can make your own yearbook! That’s right; you don’t need to be a member of a co-op or spend a whole lot of money. All it takes is a little planning and creativity.
Here are a few tips that help me to create wonderful memories that they’ll cherish for a lifetime.
- Take pictures & take them often.
Take pictures of projects, field trips, and even working on everyday subjects.
- Start planning immediately.
The yearbook should be a part of your “Back-to-School” planning. Decide if you want to display your pages in your yearbook by month, subject or season. Do you want a paper yearbook or would you prefer a hard cover? Do you want it bound in a particular way?
- Organize your pictures as you take them.
Make folders on your hard drive to store your photos. Some ideas for folder organization would be by month, subject, field trips,quarter 1…etc. You can either use copies of the photos or the originals, it’s up to you.
- Don’t forget about the folders!
You want to add to them frequently. Life get’s busy but you can’t forget about your yearbook project. Make a note. Have the kids remind you. Put time to work on it into your schedule. Add to it frequently.
- As the year comes to an end, go through your photos and pick your favorites.
Store the ones you won’t use (if they’re originals) or delete those that are copies. Get the kids involved. What are their favorite pictures/memories? (Psst…this is also good academic practice, but we won’t tell them that.)
- Get to work on making your yearbook.
There are several different ways to make a yearbook. You can print out your pictures or have them printed; then make a scrapbook-style yearbook. You can go digital and hire a company to create your yearbook. Or you can even print your photos on photo paper and take it to an office supply store to have it bound yourself. It’s all up to you.
Don’t forget your yearbook when planning your new school year. Already started the year? No problem! It’s never to late to start. Make it a family project, and most of all have fun with it!
Nikowa is a 3rd year homeschooling mom to two boys. With her “learning never ends” philosophy, they have an eclectic year-round approach to learning. When she’s not teaching, she enjoys photography, organizing, cooking, and reading. She is a #1 LOST fan and watches UGA football too! (Go Dawgs!) You can visit Nikowa at Knowledge House Academy.
Love this! I have the photos for last year – I just need to actually take the time and put it all together! I’m probably going to do a dvd format with music. Thanks for the reminder!
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Nikowa@KHA Reply:
August 19th, 2009 at 6:53 pm
That’s a great idea too, completely digital!
Nikowa@KHA´s last blog ..HOTM: 6 Tips for Making a Homeschool Yearbook
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Great tips. If you use Shutterfly you can layout your pages as you go. This helps with the end of year CRASH and not being able to remember all the details. Thanks for the reminder. I did a bad job last year.
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Nikowa@KHA Reply:
August 20th, 2009 at 10:20 am
I’ve been meaning to check out Shutterfly! Thanks for the reminder.
Nikowa@KHA´s last blog ..Change
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I love the yearbook idea.
This is our 5th year of homeschooling and I had not thought of a yearbook. Love it!
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Nikowa@KHA Reply:
August 18th, 2009 at 11:02 am
Glad I could help!
Nikowa@KHA´s last blog ..HOTM: 6 Tips for Making a Homeschool Yearbook
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Great tips Nikowa! I love yearbooks, especially homeschool yearbooks…since I no longer print pics very often with my digital camera. We have bought yearbooks from the support group we belonged to the past 2 years, but our family was just one little page. We are supposed to have yearbooks from our co-op last year. But this last year, I decided the kids would have yearbooks from our school. We went to the Kodak Picture Maker machine & loaded up pictures from the last school year. The kids each picked their own background. I was able to “write” on the cover page; I added thier names, school year, and our school name. I let them pick their favorites & then hit print! The kids took the pictures to the counter & the lady bound them with a nice hard cover. Next year, we will pick the pictures at home & put them on one disk, to take less time. I also hit the buy one get one free photo book sale at CVS. So I spent about $12 for two hard cover yearbooks. Sadly, I spent $12 each for soft cover yearbooks half full of kids that my kids don’t even know.
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Nikowa@KHA Reply:
August 20th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Great ideas!!!
Nikowa@KHA´s last blog ..Change
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What a fun idea! We did not join a co-op this year, so maybe we will try to make our own yearbook.
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Nikowa@KHA Reply:
August 20th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I’ll be trying right along with ya.
Nikowa@KHA´s last blog ..Change
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I do one for each kid…each year has a 2 page spread and it’s a regular scrapbook style. But Starting High School, I am going to go digital for it. Don’t think a 2 page spread will cut it!
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I plan on doing this! Are you familiar with blurb.com. They have it now where they can turn your blog into a book. That is what I am planning on doing at the end of the year…taking our homeschool blog posts to make our yearbook. This will be our first year of homeschooling so we haven’t tried it yet. I hope it is as easy as they say it is. I have made blurb books before…and have been really impressed with them…the prices are good and they are bound well and printed on very good quality paper. I just hope the blog to book function is easy.
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Nikowa@KHA Reply:
August 26th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
I haven’t heard of that but it sounds very interesting. Thanks for sharing that!
Nikowa@KHA´s last blog ..Greco-Persian Wars, Alexander the Great and molecular science
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Don’t know if this tip is any use to you but if you either have or know someone with a thermal binding machine, it always turns out amazing looking pieces of work. My sister’s got one and she uses it for scrapbooking mainly (and for putting my poor beaten-up paperbacks back together) but I’d imagine it’s the same basic principle.
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