Saturday, January 12, 2008

Your Turn

Over the past few days, I've been stressed out and busy working on the planning for our big school fundraiser that is held next month. Everything else seems to have been dropped by the wayside. ("Yes, I hear you!" she says to the moaning pile of dirty laundry and dishes.) Yesterday I literally sat at the kitchen table for the better part of the day calling all of our volunteers to straighten out a mistake that was made early in the school year. You see, our school had mail in registration this year instead of the 'ol normal registration day where you go in and do things in person, and all parents were asked to fill out a volunteer form and check off which areas they were willing to help out in. For the school carnival, we had many parents check off more than one committee - some as much as seven. I knew we should have called each one of them to clarify where they wanted to help out at, but that's not what was done and they were put onto every single committee that they checked off. So, I had to call and do damage control because parents were complaining that they were getting too many phone calls. It was all just a simple mix up over how to handle the sign up sheets, but it almost got out of control. Luckily, it was able to be taken care of before more of our Committee Chair's started making their phone calls. Yikes.

Moving on. (Pause.) Who am I kidding? This is where I need some suggestions from the peanut gallery. Each game that we're doing will be giving out prizes such as small erasers, pencils, bite size candy, yadda yadda yadda. But we have one special game that we want to be a huge success. Bret is over at my co-chair's house right now helping her husband build us a shiny spanking brand new Plinko game. This too will have prizes, but I really want them to stand out compared to the other games since this is "our baby". We need to have 3-4 different prizes that start out cheap and small and build up to cool. All under this game's $50 budget. That can accomidate 400 some players. My brain is tired, so I'm asking you to lend me some of your creativity. Any ideas? Pretty, pretty please?

5 comments:

Jamie said...

With that budget in mind, my only suggestion to you is to check out Oriental Trading Company (I think it's orientaltradingcompany.com, but i'd google it to make sure). They have great stuff, in bulk - stuff that kids would love. They won't have higher end stuff, but at least you can take care of the filler...good luck!

Mz Diva said...

Oh my..fifty dollars! I agree that Oriental Trading Co. is good for buying stuff in bulk. A gift certificate is a good "higher end" grand prize because you are in control of how much you want to spend and you can pick one for something kids like such as music, fast food etc. Also, if you have time you can get neighborhood businesses to either give it to you free (usually for promotion) or do a buy one get one free kind of thing. I just want to say as a teacher, I love parent volunteers! You guys work so hard to help out at schools so your kids can have a good education and don't get the thanks or recognition you deserve. Good luck with your fundraiser.
Peace,
Diva

lynda w said...

I figure we could also get candy pretty cheap after Valentine's Day. With the budget being small, maybe candy for the lower numbers that the disc drops into and a oriental trading prize into the higher numbers?

Kids are so spoiled these days, are they going to roll their eyes at little erasers and slimy feet that stick to the wall? They'd probably rather have the cheap candy - LOL.

Author said...

I think it depends how old the kids are. What ages are we looking at? You can probably get away with the erasers & slimy feet up to ... 3rd grade, or so.

I don't even know what Oriental is ... so, I have no opinion there. Games are always good -- there are some neat board games, and there are also controller games that you can hook up to the television for $15 - $20 dollars (sold at Walmart), so something like that might be a possibility for a grand prize.

lynda w said...

We've got Kindergarten to 5th grade, but there ends up being quite a few younger siblings. While we try to have something the little ones can do, we mostly aim for the K-5 age. Oriental Trading is an online company where you can buy party supplies and prizes in bulk for cheap.

Thanks for all of the ideas, keep them coming!