8 Teachers Who Are KILLING it at Blogging!

Teacher’s of Preschool, Kindergarten and all the way up to college level are starting blogs! We couldn’t be more thrilled! It’s a way to keep students and parents up to date with what’s happening in class.  It’s also great way to make announcements, reminders, and offer homework help aids.

We have compiled a list of a few awesome teachers who have created great classroom blogs using our free backgrounds, goodies and banners to design them. If you’re a teacher looking for some design ideas for your blog, you may want some inspiration from these other awesome teachers!

Up first, is Ashley’s Awesome Firsties blog, of course! She used the “Orange You Glad” collection from our site and matched the fonts and links to coordinate! She posts weekly schedules as well as homework lists! We wish you luck this year in class!

Have a look at the next blog on our list! F is for First Grade! Love the blog name, and the fact that her most recent post is a game plan for the new year! That’s perfect to keep up with parents! She used the free “Serendipity” collection from TCBOTB to complete the look.

Up next we have GWA 3rd grade! I love this bold color scheme! She posts weekly newsletters for her class here! If you love this bold blue chevron pattern, you can get it free from TCBOTB here! “Chevron Patriotic” is the name of the collection.

Mrs. Amthor’s 4th Grade blog gets an A+ from us! She used our “ABC 123” background with a matching banner to complete the look! She posts daily reviews and comprehension help on her blog regularly! Fantastic job!

Up next is Room to Bloom in Third Grade! Right off, the color scheme and happy design of her blog catches my eye! What a great choice in our free “Summer Notes” design collection for her blog. And she posts many photos on her blog of what the class is up to! I love it when teachers take photos! Awesome work!


For someone who is not so excited about math (ha ha, it’s true), I would personally love it if my math teachers had a happy friendly blog like this that I could turn to for guidance! Check out Tales of a High School Math Teacher. It’s bright and informative! She used our free blog template “Stay a While” and then added her own banner design! Cutest Work!

Teach Love Autism started this blog to keep a public diary of her life as a teacher in an autistic support classroom. And first things first, she posted about some rules she has outlined for the students in the beginning weeks of school. Awesome! Can I just say, I love the teal and navy blue color scheme from our “Nautical Nonsense” collection you can find free on our site!

I love the play on words with this cute and sassy blog, Write On, Fourth Grade! Where do I begin, it’s just too cute! She added some cute clipart children to our banner, and made her own blog button also using our banner… hip hip hooray! The free collection she used from TCBOTB is called “Lollapalooza“. She posts writing inspiration as well as discount codes for school supplies! How fantastic!

We want to wish all of these teachers, and other teachers around the globe a fabulous school year! They are off to a great start!

If you’d like to find some more school related designs and start a fun classroom blog, click here to begin your journey!

Have a fabulous day friends!

xoxo, Ashley – TCBOTB

 

Weekly Blog Schedule and FREEBIE printable

Hello and Good morning!

Do you ever find yourself in a blogging rut? Especially those of us who try to blog everyday, sometimes we get stuck, and have a difficult time thinking of things to write about!  I thought it would be fun to make a little printable with blog prompts on it for the whole week that I can refer to every day to get the creative juices flowing quicker!

Enter this little cute printable! It is 3 inches by 7 inches when printed, so it can be taped on your monitor or pinned on your cork board for easy access.

These are just a FEW ideas! I have even more in my think tank so I will send the goodness out to you as I come up with more ideas so that we can keep our blogging fresh, funky, and meaningful.

Have a FUNKY day!

Ashley from TCBOTB

 (Click on the image above, and then click again to enlarge. You can print from that page, or download to your desktop to print.) 

Turn my blog into a book!

Okay, so I’m a little excited about my blog book that came in the mail!!  One of the main reasons why I blog is to journal about our family vacations, birthdays and everything going on in our lives.  Then I will get my blog printed for the year.   My family LOVES to look through our blog books and they are super easy to make!

Free Valentine’s Day Subway Art

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I wanted to design a fun Valentine’s Day subway art!  This is a free 8 x 10 printable.  Once you click on the download you can print it directly from your computer OR you can save it to your computer.  If you save it to your computer you can print it off at any photo printing place.

 

You can frame this cute image or Mod Podge it on a canvas.  To Mod Podge it all you need to do is use a foam brush and spread a thin layer on the canvas.   Set the printed picture on top of the canvas.  Let it dry for about 20 min.  Next you will use your foam brush to spread a thin layer of Mod Podge on top of the printed Valentine’s Day subway art!  Enjoy your cute Valentine’s Day decor!

 

-Becky, tcbotb.com

 

Click here to download your free Valentines Day subway art!

Why I’m Blogging Again

by Ashley

I followed the same path that most of my friends were on at the time: got married during college, traveled with my new husband, and worked full time. Then it seemed the time was right to have a baby. Soon after, we welcomed a beautiful boy into our home. It seems my girlfriends had the same idea too because I would hear news about all of them having their first babies! Then came many more firsts: diapers, car seats, bottles, binkies, night feedings. I remember thinking how nice it would be to talk about all these firsts with my girlfriends who were experiencing them just like me.

Around that same time, I began to hear about blogging. What’s a “blog” I thought to myself? My sister happened to have a blog so I remember hopping online and looking at it one day. She would write about the every day moments with her family and post adorable pictures. Underneath each of her entries were comments left by friends and family who kept in touch with her by reading her posts! Genius! Light bulb!

I started my blog in the beginning of 2007 (right when blogging was becoming popular). I was happy to see that almost all of my friends decided to start blogs too! I would literally check in on my friend’s blogs every day to see what they were up to! They would write about their new baby, how they felt about breastfeeding, when is the right time to potty train, or details from their most recent vacation. What I loved most about the “blogging social network” of that time was that people would post more than just a picture and a few brief words. They would write details about sights, sounds, and smells, of their memories. It was more than just a snapshot, it was a story.

I was writing stories too! Blogging was my therapy as a new mother. I would put my baby boy down for a nap, and hop on my blog to see who had shared anything about my thoughts that I had posted the day before. I remember writing about the struggle I had with taking away my sons binky because he was becoming too attached to it. He had a hard time giving it up and I needed advice on how to help him with the transition. Many of my friends gave advice and I was able to help him successfully. I wrote about all of the details of my family life. I wasn’t worried about how many “likes” I would get on a certain post because it was “MY BLOG” I could do with it what I wanted. I also never had to worry about posting “too many pictures” of a certain event because I wasn’t clogging up anyone else’s news-feed. This was my little online journal.

It seemed like this blogging thing would last forever. I hoped it would. But then, all of a sudden, people started making their blogs “private” which means that only friends who were invited could view them. This made it more difficult stay in touch. On top of that, Facebook started to take flight and people jumped on that ship because it was a faster more efficient way to communicate with multiple friends at once. I get it, I jumped on that ship too. I immediately started finding friends on Facebook. I started sharing pictures and funny little thoughts. It was fun!

However, in all the hullabaloo, something was getting lost. The details. Those tiny moments in life that add the spice and color. Perhaps there was a song you were listening to when you had your first kiss, what about that funny thing your daughter said when you where playing dress-up, and you don’t want to forget exactly what you felt that day in the hospital when you held your grandmother’s hand for last time and told her how much you loved her before she took her last breath… These are the details.

I took a year or two “off” from blogging. That was to my detriment because there were many details of those years that I wish I would have written down. The bottom line is that it’s difficult to find time every day to sit down to the computer and write your thoughts. This is why I was SO HAPPY to see that there is a new Blogger app for phones!! I have my phone with me constantly, and that’s also where all my pics are stored so I can just take a few minutes to add my photos and write about them when I have downtime.

I am happy to say that I have dusted off my little blog and started writing again! And while my friends may not come to look at what’s happening on my blog anymore, that doesn’t matter to me. I have changed my outlook on what blogging is for me. It’s my journal. It’s a safe place for me to log thoughts and photos of my family. It’s a guilt-free place that I can post picture after picture of my child eating spaghetti. And in the end, that’s really all that matters.

“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” Ernest Hemingway