Wired Wednesday: Blogging for Kiddos

Wow! Can you believe it is already Wednesday?! I feel like this week has flown by! Manda is home with us today so everyone is happy! Lil Man and I are super excited to share today's post with you!    

**Disclaimer: bare with us this post got a little long winded!**

 

 Last week Lil Man was watching some videos on Brain Pop Jr. He watched one about blogs. Unfortunately, unless you have a subscription to Brain Pop Jr., you won't be able to watch the video. You can read a little about it on the page though. Basically, the video tells you what a blog is (web log), describes some types of blogs (general topics, specific subjects, personal, photo, travel, news, etc.), explains the parts of a blog (title, author/contributors, posts, tags, comments, archive, links, pages, etc), shares ways to participate in blogs (writing and publishing posts, including photos and/or videos, and reading and commenting on others' blogs), and shares a little about safety with blogs (not sharing personal info).

Later in the afternoon after watching the video, he made a comment about blogs. We told him that we have blogs that we post on (this one and personal one). He made the comment that he could start a blog. We didn't think much of it at the time, but since then, while we've been working on blog posts for here, he's made other comments.

Yesterday, we were discussing topics for upcoming weeks and he made a comment, "I could make a blog and talk about my family, things we do, and being a dancer." Mind you, he is 7 years old and doesn't really enjoy writing...so this idea is both scary and intriguing at the same time! We've always had the thought that we would like to have classroom blogs so we decided that this would be a great experience for him and us!

I spent some time researching last night about how to help him set up his blog. What he needed to know, what I needed to know, and any information I could find really. I just wasn't sure where to start with him. I actually watched the Brain Pop Jr. video myself so I would know exactly what it had talked about (hence the notes from above). I found a great Blogging Rules printable from Scholastic. I also read a blog post 14 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging, which is of course directed to teachers getting ready to blog with their students, but I definitely got some ideas.

So then it was time to sit down with Lil Man and get him started!

We discussed about some rules:
    --Only use your first name
    --Don't put the name of your school or dance studio
    --Don't put the name of the apartment complex
    --Don't give any personal contact info (email, phone number, or address)

Then we talked about some things that he can talk about on his blog. He was having a hard time coming up with what to say so we made a circle map:

Then we sat down and wrote out his first post (I had to write because he started tearing up when he realized we were going to write it on paper. Told you he doesn't like writing; it's a big weakness we're working on.) We also helped him come up with a catchy blog title.

Then I sat down with him at the computer and set it all up. I let him choose all the fonts, background, and everything. Then he sat down and typed what we had written. 

We're excited to help him get started. We all talked about some ideas for posts for him to do. We'll keep you updated on how his blog is going! If you'd like to visit, just click the screen shot above!