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    Create a Home-School Yearbook

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    Yearbooks are both wonderful keepsakes and great learning tools. Here are some tips for how to create a great yearbook for your homeschool.

    Planning:

    The first thing you will want to do is to sit down and make some notes about who is to be included and involved with your yearbook project. If your family is large, you’ll probably find that the older, high school age children are the most interested. If you work with a larger homeschool organization or group of homeschoolers, you will probably want to get together with them and figure out a plan of action. The earlier in the year that you start your project, the better, especially when you are going to be working with those other groups. That way, you can help to make sure that there will be enough photographs and other material to work with.

    Again, as early in the year as you can, start a yearbook committee and plan for them to get together on at least a monthly basis. Here you can begin to assign departments to different students – such as official photographer, copywriting, and layout and design.

    As far as software, you will likely want to see if you can get something along the lines of the Adobe Creative Suite. This will include PhotoShop and InDesign, which should be enough to do the project from beginning to end. These programs are the industry standard, and it is very useful in real world terms for students to be familiar with them and know how to use them.

    Organization:

    There are no hard and fast rules on how to organize your yearbook, but the some of the same sections you would find in a public school yearbook should apply here too. You should make sure to have plenty of photos of every activity and plenty of group photos to choose from. Make it a point to tell your photographer or photographers to snap away liberally throughout the year so that when you are starting to go through the photos you will have plenty to choose from.

    Divide your book into chapters and sections based on classes, and make sure to assign someone, such as your copywriter, to write captions for each of the photos.

    It will, of course, make the entire project easier if you keep up with activities as the year progresses rather than trying to frantically put something together at the end of the year. To that end, as suggested above, you should make sure that the yearbook committee meets on a regular basis and doesn’t get too far behind.

    Printing and Binding:

    If the photos you use are going to be in color, you will want your graphics person to make sure that they are fairly high resolution, and that you use a high quality digital printer.

    As far as binding, you can send it away or have your local print shop do the job. You may be interested to know, however, that the machines that do this kind of hardcover binding can be purchased new for less than $100, and are easy, fun and educational to use. Having one of these machines on hand will also allow your students to create their own personal projects and books whenever they like, and to do so in mere minutes.

    Making Your Own Family Yearbook

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    More than just a fun project, a family yearbook is a keepsake that both current and future generation will enjoy. Here are some tips to get you started.

    Prepare

    If you are planning on creating a family yearbook, you will have to start the year with that in mind. Begin to plan out your yearbook as early as possible and make sure to take plenty of photographs throughout the year. Also you may want to consider who your audience is going to be. Are you going to send the book out as a gift to friends and family? Are you just going to create something to keep in your home forever and pass down through the generations? In any event, you will want the photographs that you use to be of the best quality possible, so if you do not have a high-resolution printer, you may want to take them to an outside source like a drug store, or have them printed online (from one of the many websites that offer that service) and sent to you.

    Organize

    This part of the process allows for a little bit of creativity on your part. Will you simply create a book that conveys your family’s year in photos in chronological order? Will each member of your family have his or her own section that includes photos of friends and important events that didn’t happen to include the whole family, such as sporting events, school trips, proms, etc? Does the family dog get a section too? Feel free to let your imagination run wild in this part, and you can even get creative with some of the photo editing before you send your prints off.

    Assemble

    There are lots of different ways to do this. You can go purchase a photo album or scrapbook and simply fill the pages, or you can arrange, scan and print complete pages as you go along. There is some room for creativity here as well, so you shouldn’t feel as if you have to pigeonhole your project into either the photo book or the scrapbook category. However you decide to arrange the photographs, and whatever captions, musing anecdotes, or supplemental artwork you choose to include, make sure that the paper you assemble it all on is acid free, and that your paste or rubber cement is as well. This will help keep your photos preserved for a long time to come.

    Binding

    There are a plethora of options here as well. There are some online services that allow you to send PDF versions of your pages to them, and they will send you a complete hardcover book in return. These services vary in price based on the number of pages you want to include, and the number of copies you want to receive. Another option is for you to bind the book yourself. You may be surprised at how inexpensive and dead simple it is to create your own hardcover books. There are thermal binding machines out there that cost less than $100 that produce books that are as good as what you might find at the bookstore. If you are going to be making a few photo books in the coming years, doing it yourself gives you more flexibility and saves you a lot of money – and it’s more fun, to boot.

    Making a Great School Yearbook on a Budget

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    year-book-making-maCreating a great yearbook for your school is a fun and engaging project. Here are a few tips to get you started as well some suggestions for how you can save your school some money in the process.

    Planning And Organization

    1. Get your staff together and tightly organized as early in the school year as is possible. The sooner you start to divide and conquer the many tasks that are associated with putting together a yearbook, the better.

    2. Make sure that you will have someone at each major event during the school year so that you will have maximum coverage. If you can only send one person, make it a photographer, and instruct him or her to take not only photos of the event itself (such as, say, a varsity wrestling match) but to get some photos of the students who were there supporting the event, and to feel free to snap away in this age of digital cameras. You should also teach your photographers how to take good notes for captions, such as whether the individual that is pictured won that particular match, or whether the team won the meet or not. It is the little touches like these that will save you a lot of time in the editing process, give you much more information to go on when you are writing your text, and teach your staff how to work together to create a great finished product.

    3. Decide as early as you can what the overall theme is going to be for your yearbook. That way, your photographers and writers can keep their eyes out for shots and happenings that reinforce the theme.

    4. When it comes to the overall design and layout of your yearbook, if you have students of staff who are good with design software programs, or are eager to learn, that’s great. Let them work up an overall layout, etc. If you do not have any students will or able to take on the task of layout and design, keep in mind that there are lots of yearbook templates out there – plenty that are free – for you to work with. Just have a good look online and see what’s available.

    5. Deadlines are a part of life, and the sooner your staff understands that, the better. Let them know that their work may not be included in the book if they don’t get it in on time, and be prepared to stick to the deadlines that you set.

    Printing And Binding

    Depending on the types of facilities that are available at your school, you may either be printing and binding your yearbook on campus or sending it away. There are advantages to both methods, but if your school or district is perennially on a tight budget, you should really look into purchasing your own hardcover binding machines and supplies and having your students do the work themselves. Thermal binding, as this process is called, is an inexpensive and easy way to create permanent hardcover books by yourself. In some cases, in print runs that are over 300 or so, you can save around 75% per book by doing it all in-house. In some cases, there are government subsidies available for purchasing these types of machines (the thought being that teaching self-publishing is a great and worthwhile endeavor). In any event self-publishing you school yearbook is well worth looking into.