Printing and Binding Your Free Homeschool Curriculum Books

For several years I printed all of the books that we used in our homeschool. Here is an easy How To if you decide that you want your children to have physical books, as opposed to reading them on a device.

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1. Purchase a double-sided printer, if you don't already own one.

I used an HP OfficeJet Pro for a few years and it served our purposes well.

2. Print out your books.

You can use the double-sided option and you will have one page printed on each side of the printer paper. Or you can use the booklet option to conserve ink and paper.

3. Bind your books.

There are several ways that you can do this. 

• sew a binding yourself 
• glue the pages together
• purchase a comb binder machine and bind the books that way
• hole punch the pages and put them in a three ring binder or prong folder

But what was easiest and worked the best for me was just using a stapler. I purchased this heavy duty one seven years ago and it is still going strong. I have stapled up to 120 pages and the stapler has only jammed on me twice. And it was not hard to remove the jammed staples.

Non Printing Options

Nowadays, my children read their books on devices. I switched to this method because I tallied up the cost of ink and paper and it made more since, financially, to just purchase an e-reader. You could also choose to use the money that you didn't have to spend on a curriculum (since Old Time Education is free) to purchase a device like a Kindle. 

Ultimately, whether you print books or not will depend on what works for you and your children.