Making a Homeschool Yearbook

If you went to “real” school, do you remember yearbook day? It was always so exciting to get to flip through and see if you were included in any pictures. Since the homeschool experience is a little different, I knew I wanted to celebrate the end of our year using pictures somehow. I decided to use Shutterfly to create our own homeschool yearbook.

Shutterfly has several great templates that make designing a book really simple, and also has tools to customize the book as much as you want.

School Photos

The first thing I think about when designing our yearbooks is “school picture day” photos. Our tradition is taking our annual “school” photos right around Christmas time at a pretty outdoor location.

In 2021 that was Poinsett State Park, and in 2022 I chose Riverfront Park in North Charleston. I’m not a photography expert, but iPhone makes it so easy. I typically choose 3-5 pretty spots at our location, get down on the kids’ level, and take photos in “portrait mode” which sort of blurs the background and focuses really nicely on their faces.

In addition to being our “school pictures”, these are always great for grandparent gifts and home decor. Lookout for Walgreens to have a sale on their canvases and you can get a great deal on some beautiful canvas portraits for your walls.

Photo Organization and Storage

The next thing to think about is how you’ll keep track of your photos. I use the Google Photos app, which automatically downloads photos from my phone into their cloud storage.

Then, every few months, I will look through the photos and move the ones I want into an album called “2022-2023 Yearbook”. Last year I designed the book in two stages. After Christmas, I moved all the photos I wanted into the Shutterfly template I had chosen. I did the second batch right at the end of our school year.

Choose a Template and Arrange Your Photos

For the 2021-2022 school year, I went with the Colorful School Days template which was perfect for documenting our first official homeschool year. The bright, cheerful school-themed clip art added perfect little accents to our fun learning experiences.

The kids’ best photos from our December photo shoot went on the cover, and their grade levels underneath their photos. I titled the book “Housand Family Homeschool 2021-2022” and also put the years onto the book’s spine.

The inside of the book is organized loosely by months (the book actually follows each of our units, but those typically took place within a month). Each month/unit got a two page spread with around 10-20 photos.

Special Pages

I included a few other “special” pages in our homeschool yearbook as well. Since their more formal pictures were on the cover of the book, I chose 3 more casual photos of each kid for the first inside page, and next to it, I wrote a short description of each kids’ personality, grade level, activities they enjoy, and positive qualities they add to our family.

One of the back pages was a group shot of all three kids, and I added the title “Highlights of the Year” and included a speech bubble over each child’s head from the included Shutterfly clip art. When our finished book arrived and the kids looked through it, I had each of them tell me their favorite memory and hand-wrote it into the speech bubble above their heads. I also included a page with handwriting lines (available as a page background in the Colorful School Days template) so each child could write their names as a little sample of their sweet handwriting.

You can watch Shutterfly closely to get a good coupon toward the book or shipping costs. They run excellent promotions all the time.

Our Book in Progress

This year’s book is already underway. I again chose the Colorful School Days template because the clip art included is just too cute to pass up, but I chose a completely different cover, so the book has a unique feel.

Years to Come

I am so excited to have these books as special keepsakes of our time spent learning together. Yet another great thing is that the kids’ can order duplicate copies in the future if they choose. You could also order extra copies as gifts for grandparents because your projects remain stored on the Shutterfly site.

Do you create a homeschool yearbook, or do you persevere your annual memories in a different way? I’d love to hear about the unique things you do in the comments!