Earth Day Blog Hop

In addition to the book giveaway and webinar on teaching hands-on science that I am holding in honor of Earth Day 2011, I've decided to extend our celebration of Earth Day by hosting my first blog hop.  If you aren't familiar with a blog hop, it is a group blogging event in which a number of different blogs all agree to do posts on the same theme or topic.  Each blog posts not only its blog post on the subject, but also the list of the other blogs who are participating as well.  The idea is that each blog's set of readers can check out the posts of the other blogs as well, getting different perspectives on the theme as well as being introduced to some new blogs.

If you are a blogger and would like to participate, here is what you need to do:

1.  Between now and Earth Day 2011, which is April 22, create a post relating to Earth Day on your blog.  It should be a post that discusses Earth Day from the regular perspective of your blog.  So, for example, if you have an artistic blog, it could be an Earth Day art piece; if you write a current events or political blog, it could be news about Earth Day; and if you work or parent preschoolers, it could be about how your little ones are celebrating Earth Day.

2.  Once you have created your post, add it to the Linky Tools list at the bottom of this page.  Linky Tools is a great piece of software that makes your link appear not only on my page, but it will also update the list on any other blog that has copied the code onto their site.

3.  So, after you have added your link, you need to copy the list to your blog so that your readers can see all the other Earth Day posts.  The following are the instructions about how to do that.

To add the links to your blog, copy this code for Blogger blogs:

<script src="http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=84371" type="text/javascript"></script>

Or this one for free WordPress blogs:

<script src="http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky_include.aspx?id=84371" type="text/javascript"></script>

and paste into your blog, using the Edit HTML tool.

4. Finally, you get to add this lovely button to your blog to indicate you are participating in the Earth Day Blog Hop.


Copy and paste the following code into your HTML editor in order to have the button appear on your website:

<a href="http://teachingyourmiddleschooler.blogspot.com/2011/04/earth-day-blog-hop.html"> <img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw-0Yq40tu98YYQrZysmepRSPViVlstMcvn0j3HKCJvNaTNebKFJIv4uvj1TmbA4cwtmFFBktxWHwOgF2toL3jYQE3OP3mm_Z7X-vc-5-aVHCBlrq818yhz-6arzvQtF6KQMvIKOKFUJ8/s1600/EarthDayButton.jpg" />
</a>

And that's it!  You will be an official member of the Earth Day Blog Hop.

We have a few people already lined up for this blog hop, including Maria of Natural Math and Michelle of Homeschool Literature and Pandahoneybee's Homeschooling Adventure.  But we would love to have lots more bloggers join us!  Let's focus some blogging attention on Earth Day to remind us all of ways we can do more to appreciate and protect our planet.