$50 Amazon Gift Card Giveaway Sponsored by MontessoriBuddy.com

UPDATE: This giveaway is now closed. Pleae see bottom of post for the announcement of the winner!

I had the fun experience yesterday of doing a web demo of the new MontessoriBuddy site. I couldn’t help but wish I’d had MontessoriBuddy when I was a Montessori teacher and school administrator.

MontessoriBuddy is a software application to help Montessori teachers and schools (preschool-grade 5) keep records and communicate with parents easily and efficiently. Just a few of MontessoriBuddy’s features: use it to record attendance; create student work plans; record individual lessons, group lessons, and notes for each child; generate activity reports for each child daily or weekly; place lesson plans on calendars; and automatically send reports to each child’s parents. Many new features are being developed for autumn, such as creative, hassle-free fundraising using affiliate sales.

But the program isn’t just great for teachers and schools – it’s wonderful if you’re a parent of a Montessori student (or a parent of any preschool student if your child’s school uses PreschoolBuddy with similar capabilities). MontessoriBuddy gives you a better understanding of Montessori education and a way to know what your child is doing at school so you can support your child’s school experiences at home. You can always recommend that your child’s school purchase MontessoriBuddy.

Here’s more information from MontessoriBuddy:

Don’t Settle for Being the “Best Kept Secret In Town”!

By its very nature, the Montessori Method can present a challenge for parents who are more familiar with test-based performance metrics. No matter how many times they ‘hear’ the Montessori Method praised, even the most engaged parents may question their decision to invest in a Montessori education (especially when their child reaches public school age). In uncertain economic times, being the “best kept secret in town” just doesn’t make much sense. It’s up to Montessori educators to help parents ‘see’ tangible evidence of a substantial return on their child’s academic investment. MontessoriBuddy.com is here to help!

MontessoriBuddy was designed to help bridge the gap between home and school. MB’s goal is to simplify the day-to-day administrative chores for Montessori educators while providing a convenient way for busy parents to remain actively engaged with the school community. The end result is a more personalized connection with the classroom for all stakeholders in a child’s education.

MontessoriBuddy includes the following key features to help bridge the gap between home and school:

• Classroom Management – Spend your day focused on what you love to do – educating children!!
• School Administration – Helping you save time, money, and trees!!
• Parent Communication – This just in…parents LOVE hearing stuff about their kids!!
• School Fundraising – When bake sales & book sales just won’t do!!

Now for the Giveaway:

$50 Amazon E-Mail Gift Card Giveaway (sponsored by MontessoriBuddy.com)

This giveaway of a $50 e-mail gift card to be used toward anything at Amazon.com is open to anyone 18 and older worldwide. Giveaway is open until Thursday, May 19th at 11:59 p.m. MST.

How to Enter:

You can enter multiple times! Please make a separate comment below for each entry. The plugin that chooses the winner counts each comment as one entry, so be sure to make separate comments. For entries such as Twitter, Google Friend Connect, Facebook, etc., please tell which name you’re following as. IMPORTANT – DON’T FORGET YOUR MANDATORY ENTRY!

MANDATORY ENTRY (worth 1):

Visit MontessoriBuddy.com to learn more about this great software application, and leave a comment telling me what feature you like best about MontessoriBuddy.com.

BONUS ENTRIES (worth 1 each unless specified otherwise) Leave a comment for EACH of the following things you do:

* Visit Montessori Buddy.com on Facebook. Facebook has new rules regarding promotions. I can’t ask that you “like” a page for an entry. While on the MontessoriBuddy.com Facebook page you could “like” MontessoriBudy.com, but it doesn’t affect your entry in this giveaway. You must leave a separate comment on this post that you’ve visited MontessoriBuddy.com on Facebook.

* Visit Living Montessori Now on Facebook.

* Follow @MontessoriBuddy on Twitter

* Follow @DebChitwood on Twitter.

* Subscribe to my newsletter (and get Montessori quotes plus geography album by Karen Tyler from Worldwide Montessori Online FREE when you sign up!) – see my sidebar.

* Follow me via Google Friend Connect (see my sidebar).

*Follow me via Networked Blogs (see my sidebar).

* Join our Living Montessori Now Community.

* 2 Entries for each place you share this giveaway online (Facebook, Twitter, contest sites, etc. Leave 2 separate comments with identifiers such as entry 1, entry 2 and link to Facebook page, etc.) For Twitter, you can tweet something like: RT @DebChitwood: Enter to win $50 Amazon Gift Card from @MontessoriBuddy at Living Montessori Now http://bit.ly/j9ANFA #giveaway #Montessori

* 5 entries if you blog about this giveaway (must link to both this post & MontessoriBuddy.com . Leave 5 separate comments with identifiers such as entry 1, entry 2, entry 3, etc., along with a link to your post.

Contest goes for two weeks and ends Thursday, May 19th at 11:59 p.m. MST. Winner will be chosen randomly by And the Winner Is Plugin and announced on May 20^th through an update on this blog post (and an email to the winner). Best of luck! 🙂

UPDATE:

It’s early morning, Friday, May 20. A winner has been selected!  The winner of the $50 Amazon gift card is Ashley S. (@smash906)! 

Here’s the winning comment:

Ashley S.

May 18, 2011 | 5:10 pm

Tweeted #2 http://twitter.com/smash906/status/70989442491490304

In her mandatory entry, Ashley said about MontessoriBuddy: “I love that you can check in on everything with your phone!”

Congratulations, Ashley!!! Thank you to MontessoriBuddy.com for sponsoring the giveaway – and thank you to everyone who entered!