Making A Homeschool Yearbook: Tips And Inspiration

Last year was the first year I made a homeschool yearbook for us, and I love it! It gets flipped through a lot, and actually serves as a review for the things we’ve covered. Plus, it sure makes all the cool school stuff I do with the kids feels worthwhile and is not forgotten! 😉

how to make a homeschool yearbook- ideas and inspiration

Our homeschool yearbook was just for lil ‘ol us, not part of a large co-op. Well… we do actually get together with one other family on Wednesdays and have “mini co-op” so this yearbook did serve for both of our families.

When I started making a plan for our homeschool yearbook, I wasn’t sure where to start. My first inclination was to just put everything in the order that it happened… but then I realized that I wanted to group like things together (for instance, all the Science together, all the field trips together, etc.)

Then the real secret of yearbook building came to me… The yearbook is one snapshot of the year. It doesn’t have to go in chronological order of the school year, the book in itself is the time frame- the school year. Once I realized this, I divided our year into subjects, and made the pages accordingly.

Here’s the list of sections from our homeschool yearbook (and you’re going to see a lot of Charlotte Mason style shining through here.)

  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Homeschool Overview
  • Meet the Staff/Students
  • The Homeschool Room
  • Charlotte Mason Hymns and Picture Studies
  • Presentations
  • Art
  • Music
  • Poetry Teas
  • Handwriting
  • Preschool
  • Extra Curriculars
  • Field Trips
  • Nature Study
  • Liturgical Year
  • Books/Reading
  • The Classroom Is Wherever We Are! (this is where I show pictures of all the awesome/weird places we’ve done school over the year)
  • Handicrafts
  • Deskwork/Hands On Learning
  • Science
  • Religion Class
  • Special Days/Tea Parties
  • End of the Year
  • Places For Signatures

My System For Completing Photo Books Quickly:

I can make a whole year into an album in two afternoons when I’m willing to bunker down and concentrate. This is only possible if you first have your photos digitally organized into yearly folders. Here’s how I do it.

  1. Make a new “album” in Snapfish. Upload only your favorite photos from that year. Upload them in the order of which they happened. Don’t agonize over which are your “favorites.” Just choose straight from the uploader. Set it to “large thumbnails,” scroll through, and pick the ones that make you smile.
  2. Start a new photo book as a project. I do the 8 by 11 hard back books that allow for a custom cover. Choose a consistent look so they will look like a “set” when they’re all together.
  3. Create an image to be your cover file. Upload it, and drop it onto the cover.
  4. You’re going to go through the book 3 times before you’re finished. In the first round, decide about how many “pages” you want for each event/subject. Because you’re only doing highlights, a trip to the zoo for instance maybe only gets 1 page. Just choose your favorites, and quickly drop them onto the page. Move onto the next event and to do the same thing. In all of my books, I have a few pages where a really good photo is featured and gets to cover an entire page. Go through the whole book this way. When you’re finished, make sure you’re ok with the number of pages you’ve ended up with. I like to keep my books under 100 pages.
  5. Now that you know what each page is dedicated to, go through again and click to choose a photo layout. I like to use the “grid” option because it allows for the most amount of photos to be the largest on the page. If you’ve chose too many pictures for 1 page and it makes them too small for your liking, this is when you weed some more unnecessary photos.
  6. Go through the book one more time, putting in background colors on the pages. Also, minimally you can add text boxes and “embellishments” around the page. This is where it’s easy to loose all your time, so again, don’t be a perfectionist.

Going over and doing the whole books like this will take a lot less time than agonizing over each page individually. 

I’d love nothing more than sit with you on my couch with a cup of tea, flip through our homeschool yearbook, and chat about all of our good times from last school year. But this blog post is probably as close as we’re going to be able to come.

So get your cup of tea, and kick back. Let’s flip through our yearbook together. 🙂 Rather than picking and choosing the best pagespreads, I’ve decided to just share our entire 2014-15 yearbook with you!

homeschool yearbook cover idea

I have bible verses on the title page of all of our family albums, so it seemed fitting that we have one here as well.

homeschool yearbook pagespred idea 1

Then I decided to share our homeschool goals, mascot, and a favorite educational quote. I put this really big picture in the front of my kids at the table and I tell everyone “This is what our homeschool looks like 80% of the time. And the other 20% is the rest of this book.” 😉 So true! But usually Lydia would be sitting… Some of the kids still being in their pajamas is bonus for this picture!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 2

Then I thought it would be funny to have a staff/students page. Do you love all of Mark’s jobs? This is a great way to tell what grade everyone is.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 3

Then I took the opportunity to show off my new homeschool room. The year before I had the homeschool room upstairs, but now it’s in the office attached to the kitchen. I LOVE having it so close to the kitchen!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 4

Charlotte Mason hymn study and picture study.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 5

Our presentations are kind of a glorified “show and tell”

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 6

Durer art project

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 7

Music class- listening to different composers

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 8

Composing

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 9

Vivaldi’s 4 seasons, and practice with instruments (We study 3 artists and 3 composers per year due to our Charlotte Mason homeschooling style)

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 10

Music notebooking pages, and another Durer art project- creating a signature like his

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 11

Poetry teas- so much fun!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 12

Geography and handwriting

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 13

Preschool with Violet and Anabelle

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 14

and more preschool

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 15

Extra curricular- horseback riding lessons and fun days at church

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 16

Cub Scout trips

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 17

More Durer art projects- making texture hares, and printmaking our own bunnies

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 19

Nature study homeschool yearbook page

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea nature study

Living the Liturgical Year at home- basically Catholic Icing for the year boiled down to 2 pages

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 20

Field Trips to a Frog and Toad play, and the Carl Sandburg Home. Both super fun!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 21

Field trip to Alabama Space Center

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 22

Walnut Grove Plantation field trip- this is one of my favorites!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 23

A Harvest-themed tea party for the Fall

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 24

We heart books! Our reading page.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 25

Post continues after this brief information about the Catholic Icing Monthly Membership


Monthly Liturgical Membership

Catholic Liturgical Monthly Membership

Perfect for families! Each month you gain access to printable activity pages, crafts, home altar pieces, and more.
 
Never has living the liturgical year been so easy and affordable!
 

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 26

Another Durer art lesson: His rhinos. And… The Homeschool Classroom is Wherever We Are!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 27

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 28

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 29

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 30

Rembrandt art project- painting light and dark cubes. And a self portrait project.
homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 31

Studying Tchaikovsky and the Nutcracker!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 32

A special Nutcracker themed tea party.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 33

Field trip to see the Nutcracker.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 34

Rembrandt art project: tint and shade nativity paintings

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 35

Christmas themed tea party

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 36

Charlotte Mason handicrafts

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 37

Desk work and hands-on learning

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 38

Chemistry class

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 39

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 40

Rembrandt art project: tint and shade sphere planets

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 41

Religious Notebooking Pages

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 42

Saint Patrick’s Day tea party

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 43

Lenten tea party

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 44

Rembrandt art project: light and dark fruit and Easter crosses

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 45

Easter tea party

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 46

Van Gogh art project- fill in the missing pieces with impressionistic texture.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 47

Van Gogh art project: make Starry Night into Morning Light… and other variations!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 48

More poetry teas

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 49

Learning to conduct and marching Sousa style!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 50

Going to see a live band perform Sousa music.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 51

And a Sousa themed tea party because, hey, why not?

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 52

Van Gogh art project- impressionistic color wheels and perspective landscapes.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 53

A birthday tea party for Anabelle, and painting Van Gogh’s sunflowers on real canvases!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 54

A Vincent van Gogh themed tea party- which was super fun!

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 55

The last day of co-op with review games.

homeschool yearbook pagespread idea 56

That’s it! Thanks for flipping through it with me. <3 I’m currently working on our 2015-16 yearbook. Hope to share it when I’m finished! I’ve been treasuring this one for the last year now, and I’m sure will continue treasuring it forever! 🙂

me and my homeschool yearbook

You can find the rest of my homeschooling resources for families here.

Comments

  1. Very nice!

  2. What a great idea! Definitely keeping this in mind for our 2016/17 homeschool year! Thanks for sharing.

  3. Ann-Marie says

    This is awesome and super inspiring! I love having it all in one place. What fun to be able to go back and look at it.

    • It really is! And not only that but whenever I feel like I’m not “doing enough” or having one of those freak out days about homeschooling in general, I can look thorough it and remind myself that actually things are going well here and bad days here or there don’t change that. 🙂

  4. Please share more about your homeschooling! This all looks so fun and inspiring. 🙂

  5. I love making scrapbooks like this and have used Picaboo to make several for gifts and for our family! Yours turned out so nice! I would love to do this and yours is inspiring! I just need to find more hours in my day and find ways to live off of no sleep 😉

  6. Great idea, Lacy! I can see why you flip through your yearbooks a lot. They are filled with wonderful pictures and memories. 🙂 Your children are truly blessed.

    What art program do you use? Or did you design it yourself? Looks like a lot of fun projects! 🙂 Thanks, and God bless. +

  7. Hi Lacy! I loved how you shared your homeschool yearbook! What a fabulous job you did!!! I’ve made yearbooks for our homeschool for the past 5 years and they are such a treasure for our family. It’s fun to look back and feel a sense of accomplishment and savor the memories! I use Snapfish as well, although I’ve had issues lately uploading… it seems to take FOREVER! Is this an issue for you? I also had a thought that might be helpful: uploading favorite photos monthly so they’re all there at the end of the year when I have time to put it all together! Of course, I need to put this into practice myself! 🙂 Thanks for all your work sharing ideas, inspiring other homeschool moms and boldly living out your faith! God bless and keep up the great work!

    • Yes, uploading is slow lately for sure! And yes, it was totally my plan to build the yearbook as we went for this past school year and that did SO NOT HAPPEN! lol. 😉

  8. Andrea Otto says

    Hi Lacy,
    I got your email this morning. We are a Catholic family that sends our children to school. We really try to still integrate our faith in our lives daily. We look at the saints of the day, do lots of your activities and other things to celebrate our faith. I will pray for you. I am happy that you are adjusting well, and that school is going well for your children. I hope you continue to do well! I feel like this is going to be good. I think there is a need for a person who blogs whose children go to school and still tries their very best to teach their children the faith. There is a need for this. So many bloggers homeschool. I enjoy their posts and their ideas very much, but there is a void of people that send their children to school and have a Catholic blog. I am looking forward to this journey. Prayers and hugs to your family!