A Visit from a Fellow Blogger

Word of our blog is getting around! Mrs. Trainor, our Business Administrator, is an avid blogger. She has been writing her blog, Knitting and Sewing My Way Through Life, for three years. She visited us today to share with us the many things she has learned as a blogger.

Mrs. Trainor is passionate about knitting and sewing. She blogs, she told us, because she wants to share the things she makes with people all around the world who share her hobby. She told us that years ago, she only knew a few knitters that lived near her. Maybe she would meet fellow knitters in a yarn store or she would go to a class and meet knitters but now as a blogger, she knows many, many knitters and they live all over the globe. Mrs. Trainor loves how her blog has connected her to so many people who share her passion.

Mrs. Trainor showed us her blog and talked to us about the different parts of her blog. Visuals - pictures and videos - are a big part of her blog. Her photographs are very important pieces of her blog because she blogs about things she knits and sews and she wants people to be able to see what she made.

Mrs. Trainor showed us her Answer Garden where a blogger can pose a short question to readers and readers can answer the question. An Answer Garden is different than a comment because comments should be insightful, add something to a conversation, and invite others to comment.

She also showed us the labels box on her blog and taught us how she creates labels. Labels allow readers to find specific information in her blog quickly. We noticed that the labels box on a blog sidebar is just like the index in the back of a nonfiction book!

Picture of the Labels on Mrs. Trainor's blog

Finally, Mrs. Trainor told us how impressed she is that 4th graders are learning how to blog. She thinks that keeping a blog is a great way to become a better writer. In fact, even Mrs. Trainor, an expert blogger, is learning how to be a better writer by blogging. We taught her something too. She is using our Blog Planning Sheet to plan for her future posts. She said she has a big stack of them on her refrigerator and every time she thinks of an idea for a blog post, she fills one out!

Mrs. Trainor, pointing out the photographs on her blog as she tells us the importance of the quality of her photographs.