Mrs P (and others) - Is your Yearbook Club an afterschool activity? How do you administer it? Is there a limit on the number of kids you can accept? If during the day, how did you get kids from class? I am interested in the specific mechanics of how you got the kids involved because I would like to propose a similar program at our school for next year. I just KNEW it could be done better - thanks for proving it!

Hi jstone. Our Memory Book Committee is new every year as it's largely comprised of 5th grade parents. There are those who have done it before and a HUGE file is passed on year to year.
We have begun reminding parents at all grade levels every year - eapecially Room Parents - to take LOTS of photos and save them for the Memory Book in 5th Grade...I digress.
We have a HUGE, TRADITIONAL fundraiser for the 5th Grade Memory Book a few weeks prior to Thanksgiving to order cakes,pies,specialty desserts at a local bakery. It's become well-known so they line up! This year we earned $650.00 - not bad. After pricing prior yearbooks to various printers we were shocked at the prices! Lo and behold a 5th grade parent who works for a large printing company in Boston offers to do it for ZIP! The initial agreement is that we set all the photos up and then scan them into Publisher software. Problems arise and the parent says to give him the setup pages and we move forward. We have 40 pages (class photos from K and up; teacher comments; letter from the principal; photo collages and small individual photos next to a few sentences about what they'll miss most, who they idolize and what they'd like to be when they grow up, etc.) 100 books due shortly. The money we raised, which in prior years has had to be added to by bake sales, candle sales and parent assistance (buy space in Memory Book for a note to your child) will buy '03 t-shirts for the kids which will have everyone's signature in the "'03". The 5th Grade Recogition Ceremony is put on by the teachers and we're supplying the pizza lunch (which has also been donated by a 5th grade parent!!!) At least 1/2 the leftover $ we raised is going to buy gifts for the parent who did the Memory Book printing and the one who is supplying the pizzas.
I have one more child in elementary school and have already found out there's a family in the printing business who would like to be involved... Use but don't abuse sources when you can!

Adobe Photoshop is actuall a photo manipulation software not a page layout software. You'll probably need both. Photoshop is top of the line as far as photo manipulation however it is expensive (I'm thinking about $400-$500). You'll need Quark XPress or Pagemaker to actually "lay out" the yearbook. These softwares took the place of the old cut and paste process. Photoshop is used for manipulating your scans of photo's or electronic photos to adjust the resolution, size, color etc...

Once you have a grid set up in your page layout software you place the photographs (that have already been adjusted in your photo manipulation software) and text where you want them by following your grid. Once you get used to the software it's not difficult.

My husband builds yearbooks for a living and has wanted to do this with our school for years. Unfortunetly we never had the support to get it off the ground. I know there are some excellent programs out there to make them. He uses Adobe Photoshop at work. I know its a little complex, at least for me, but once you get the hang of it, it's really quite easy. Good luck on this, it won't be easy, I hope you have lots of help!

I do our yearbook for our elementary school. This is the second year I've done the yearbook. We have never tried any company as I am a graphic designer and volunteered to "help" with the yearbook. This year we had a committee of parents taking pictures which they emailed to me (mostly) and I used PageMaker to do the layout (I'd rather use Quark XPress on a Mac but I don't have one available at the moment). I gave the electronic files to our printer two weeks ago and delivery is due at the end of this week. This allows us to get all of the events (except fun day on the last week of school) in the yearbook. It costs the PTO about $1,600 to print 350 copies of a 48 page yearbook (which includes bleeds). The cover and back cover are full color and designed by the winning third grade student (there was a competition in March of the covers the students did in art class and our elementary is K-3). 2nd place for third grade and 1st place for the other three grades get their "cover" on the back cover. The guts of the yearbook are black and white. We charged $20 to sponsor the yearbook (a message or business advertisement in the yearbook plus 1 free yearbook) or $7 to buy the yearbook. Our goal on this committee is not to make money but to make sure everyone who wants a yearbook gets one. We will have made a couple of hundred dollars in profit this year.
Hope this helps.

I too was disappointed that the yearbook company's deadlines were in March. So, this year the second , third, and fourth graders and I formed a yearbook club and did it ourselves.
We used powerpoint to make the pages and a scanner. We have a preschool along with our grade school (which ended last week). We did two yearbooks so they would get theirs on the last day of preschool. It turned out great! I just took the powerpoint presentation to Kinkos and had them print it, it only took 2 days, so just about everything was included in the yearbook (except the last week of school). Our grade school yearbook will be finished Friday and I'm taking it to Kinkos on Saturday for a pick-up on Monday. I was surprised how mcuh the youngsters could do. They took pictures, did interviews, scanned pages, inserted clipart, and did the page
layouts. However, if you don't want to do it yourself, the Memory company has a great program that will make the book for you. However, you will have an early date to get it to them, Usually March or April. Hope this helps.