New Year, New Diaries and a Fun MapStudio GiveAway…

So it is the last official week before kids in our region start school after their Summer break… We have a slightly different schedule and are exactly half way through our school year and ready for a fresh start and new beginnings that come with a new year to spur us on. We have had one week back in school, an easy week of science experiments and giving the guys time to get on with projects that they had begun.

So what could be more fun than a funky new school diary, I remember absolutely loving mine at school… the one book in my school bag that was totally mine and not overruled by a teacher… mine was covered in pictures and artwork and quotations… I really, really loved it. Anyway we have two really cool diaries to give away to a couple of readers…

1. A year at a glance.
2. A month at a glance.
3. A page a day, with time slots and a place to write birthdays.
4. Timetable Pages… always handy to know what activities you have on which day.
5. Fact sheets: Times tables, Moon Phase chart and Equinoxes.
6. A map of South Africa, filled with provincial facts.
7. A quotable quote on each page.
8. It is completely bialingual/tweetalig and so lots of vocab to learn.

As a homeschooling mom we use journals a lot in our school. For the last year or two to keep track of who was doing what on which day, and for keeping up with what everyone was doing I kept a notebook of their work. In fact I used a little carbon copy book, when you write a list it would copy the list on the page below – I would give the child a copy of the their list and keep a copy for myself. That way we both knew what was expected of us, it gave all of us a certain amount of accountability… this year we are trying homework diaries… it is different for us and fresh and fun.

I am looking forward to seeing how it works out. We can pop our potential outings on the monthly planners – so that everyone knows what days we will be out and about and not doing school… and the daily planners for keeping track of their daily work and what we need to finish on a particular day. Not to mention my kids love keeping track of their friends birthdays… it’s a real thing!!! So the favourite feature of the diary has been the fact of the day… some kids have dashed through and read them all and some of them are only looking “on the day,” it takes all types… Not to mention the prolific writers amongst us have been writing down their “favourite thing of the day”… so many things all in one place.

Pink or Blue we have got one for you… We have a two School Diaries from MapStudio to GiveAway to our readers.

This GiveAway works in the usual way, leave a comment before the end of play on Saturday 16 January 2016 and tell us what cover you want: pink, blue or either. We will draw and publish the winners in the Fabulous Fun Post after that. I won’t respond to your comments as I do on our other posts because I don’t want to be included in our own giveaway.

Our GiveAways are open to everyone: If you have won a GiveAway before never fear – enter away. If you live on the far side of the world – enter away. Postage takes forever from here but eventually it should get to you! Good luck and happy commenting!!!

We would like to thank MapStudio who supplied us with diaries to review. We were not paid for the review and the opinions expressed in it are as usual, entirely our own.