Blogger Meet Up Blog Hoppin' Giveaway!!

Thank you for joining me on this Blog Hop!!

As promised, here is YOUR chance to benefit from our amazing blogger meet up! 

One great part of the blogger meet up was a "teacher tool swap." Each attendee was asked to wrap up his or her favorite "teacher tool" to give to another teacher at the meet up. We played a fun little pass the gift game, and then took turns opening our surprises! 

The tool I received was this pack of Frixion Pens! They are awesome! 

This was me awkwardly modeling them at the meet up. :) 

Thought I better take a pic of what these babies can do to give you a better idea. If you follow me on Instagram, you've already seen this pic, but seriously I'm in love! 

I actually said, "Wow" out loud at my desk yesterday morning when I saw how well they erased! 

Every teacher at the meet up also received a door prize (or "humpback whale," if you will), and I was SO excited about my prize! 

I won a CLASS PACK of Crayola Dry Erase Crayons!! Who doesn't love Crayola?

They are perfect for those times when you don't want what you've written to accidentally rub off if someone's sleeve hits the board. I used them to write vocab words for a chapter one of my small groups was reading. 

No accidentally rubbing those words off! But they do wipe completely clean when you're ready. Perfect!

I learned so much in a few hours at this meet up, and I, along with all of my blogging buddies, want to share a few of these tips with you! 

First, I learned I needed to be more "social," so I joined the club that is Instagram, and it really is as fun as they say! Plus, most of the teacher bloggers you already know and love are on there.

 I didn't see the purpose before because Facebook already includes pictures, but the pictures on Instagram are way more fun! And the best part is your newsfeed doesn't get bombarded with political rants, mug shots, and game notifications! Awesome! 

Along those same lines, I learned about some fabulous photo editing sites/apps to use when posting photos to Instagram or a blog (or just for fun). 

I've been obsessed with using Phonto lately for Instagram photos like this one: 

(Yes, donuts are therapeutic.)

Other fab sites/apps I learned about include PicMonkey and A Beautiful Mess.
So much fun!

Bottom line: no more boring pics from this girl! 

My third and final piece of wisdom is great for any of you who are just starting out with blogging like me, or maybe you've been blogging forever but never knew how to add the link to your blog when commenting on others' posts.
Surprisingly, it's really easy!

I Teach. What's Your Superpower? has created several pages of tutorials for new bloggers, and this was one of them! 

You just insert your blog title in this HTML code (replace mine with yours): 

<a href="http://wearefirstgradestars.blogspot.com/">First Grade STARS</a>

Then copy, paste, and voila! A clickable link to your blog that you can add to your comments!

And now for the BEST PART!

THE GIVEAWAY!

One very lucky person who follows the hop all the way to the end and completes the Rafflecopter will win ALL of these prizes and MORE!

So keep on hoppin' by clicking the button below to hear from the next fabulous blogger!