Can you see yourself in this picture? Your family just completed the unit study of your dreams. You’re at the end, and you’re thinking there must be more. What can you do with all of the fabulous projects, the stack of photos, and your memories of the fun? You could simply set it aside and walk on, or you can take advantage of print-on-demand technology and make a permanent record, or three, or ten…

Not into unit studies? Keep reading.

Traditional printing requires a huge investment. You would be ordering thousands of books at a time and paying up front for the privilege to do so. Print on demand is a phrase that refers to a different type of publishing. A printing company that has the right technological toys can store your book in digital format and print copies as they are needed – one copy at a time or five hundred copies at a time. The individual book price will inevitably be higher than it would with traditional printing, obviously, but the trade-off makes it possible for even homeschooling parents to enjoy professionally printed books containing all sorts of things.

Here’s another picture. You face, at the end of the year, yet another pile of records and photos, school projects and report cards. How do you decide what to keep? Where in the world do you store it all? Make yet another school project out of it (Hey, I’m for involving the kids as much as possible!) and turn it into an adventure in publishing as you create your own school yearbook. First, pare down and organize the collection into four categories: what you know absolutely must be kept, what you want to keep, what you’d like to keep if there’s room, and what you’ll only keep if you need filler. Kept items could include such things as essays, tests, important quizzes, report cards, letters from mentors, field trip reports, attendance records, awards earned, records of special events (awards ceremonies, special dinners, etc.) and records of involvement in extracurricular activities and community service. You’ll want to take photos, or have your photography student take photos, of all of the three-dimensional projects that were done through the year, and photos of the appropriate children with their projects as well. Hopefully, you’ve been snapping pictures of these projects in progress, field trips, etc. Now start organizing.

You can organize your yearbook in whatever manner appeals to you. Some prefer chronological records, others might want to separate records by subject or some other broad category, and still others may wish to put official things like attendance records and report cards together. The book will be yours, so the organization choice is yours as well. You can also choose the format. A standard book may be published in 6” x 9”, but you can just as easily go with an 81/2” x 11” book instead. A perfect-bound book looks professional, but you may choose to go all out with a hardcover edition; it’s your book and your call.

There are multiple print-on-demand publishers on the net, but for the sake of this article I will only mention two. Lulu is a print-on-demand publisher that attracts professional authors as well as those who write for fun. With Lulu you can publish books, ebooks, brochures (up to 18 pages, no cover), calendars, and more. They provide templates that make setting your books up relatively easy. Café Press lets you self-publish books and create a wide range of other items from T-shirts to posters to housewares to audio and data CDs. On both sites, you can set up to sell the products you create. This enables you to make the fruit of your labors available to family and friends and, depending on the product you create, might also result in some extra income for your family.

As is true with any other venture, you should consider the cost before you get too far into the project. One of your first steps should be to determine what company you want to use and what your product will be. Both of the companies I’ve mentioned are entirely up front about their prices; this will enable you to determine how many pages your book can contain, whether or not you will use photos, if those photos will be in color, etc. Again, I advise keeping the kids involved with the whole process; there is much educational value here!

The world of print-on-demand self-publishing offers seemingly endless possibilities. I’ve mentioned two already – a unit study compilation and a school yearbook. Here are a few more suggestions.

Calendars
Calendars are wonderful things. You need them to help keep track of your life and, depending on what decorates them, they can be a joy to look at as well. You can design your own calendars using student-created artwork or photography and give your budding artists a boost like they’ve never had before. I always advise striving for significance in a child’s studies and few things make a child feel more significant, that his work is more significant, than to see his pieces published professionally; it is validation of a high order.

Anthologies & Novels
Likewise, seeing his short stories, poems, essays, and novels published professionally, especially if they’re made available for sale and he sees others (even only family and friends) buying the books, will lift any aspiring author or poet’s spirits.

Field Trip Records
Some families do elaborate scrapbooks of their field trips, including photographs, student essays, and more. It would be easy to translate this idea into a book that recorded the year’s field trips in a truly memorable, permanent, and easily reproduced way.

Family History
As Eclectic Homeschool Online’s (EHO) resident “front porch historian” (See EHO’s review of FrontPorch History), I must point out the benefits of preserving your family heritage. This type of a project is not only educational, but also serves to enrich family ties in a way few other things can. Should you choose to follow the course I recommend in the book and collect a record of your family heritage, you should seriously consider taking the next step into publication. These things should not only be kept for your own benefit, but also for the benefit of those you love. Such a book would be most interesting if it included at least a simple genealogy along with family members’ reminiscences, ‘home stories’ (I did a whole book based around photographs taken in my grandparents’ house, accompanied by the memories these photos inspired.), family photos, ancestral biographies, and even family-based, historical fiction.

Consider print-on-demand and the possibilities it offers. Set aside some time to check into pricing and options, then gather the family and discuss ways in which you can use this technology to enhance your family’s studies. You’ll be glad you did.