We ask each child to collect money. For each 50 cents they collect, they receive one vote for king/queen and one ticket to be used at the Hoe Down. Everyone who brings in $100 gets to Silly String the teachers and in turn gets 200 tickets. The top "vote getters" are the king and queen. We have expanded the "court" for those bringing in several hundred dollars to include princes and princesses.
There is a huge assembly in the gym the day of the Hoe Down and we do whatever (usually to the principal) we have built up to. All the $100 vote receiptients are announced and brought onto the gym floor and then the "court". Then the teachers get Silly Stringed in front of the students.
The night of the carnival we don't keep track of which games make the most money. All we want to do is make sure that there are plenty of games and prizes for everyone to use the tickets they won in the "contest".
We also give extra tickets to the teachers to give to students who don't bring in any money or very little and it is amazing to see the students sharing their tickets. Amazingly we do sell tickets the night of but mostly to families with older or younger children or elderly people who come for the Bingo.
The Bug Splat game is a piece of plywood painted to look like a windshield (with goofy people inside) and it's marked off into point sections. We use those sticky bugs (they have a lot of spiders in the Halloween section of Walmart). You throw the bugs at the windshield and if they stick you get the prize. Even if they don't you get a small prize. We have two lines to move quickly.
Like I said, the night of the carnival it is just about the kids having fun, not about the money anymore.
New game we are adding next year is Horseshoe Golf. You drill holes through two golf balls and connect them with rope. You build a small ladder type structure out of PVC. They toss the "horseshoe" and get the points of the rung it wraps around. Thanks Crawford Elementary in Russellville, AR for this one!!
The games we choose have to be able to move quickly otherwise we have traffic jams.
Just a side note. We had over 300 business donors. Despite Katrina and Rita, we found everyone still very generous.
We always have difference of opinion on our King Queen contest too. I have my opinion and I keep it to myself. If they don't agree with it, their children do not have to be involved. It brought in 12 of the $16,000 we made last year. We'd be crazy to change it now. We've been doing it for like 52 years.
If I had to point to one thing (though there are many) that makes this such a hugh success is that our teachers are such motivators. We put our Hoe Down together is less than two months.
At eight weeks out, we start securing donations. We ask our parents to ask their employers and others for donations. We also have a set group of donors that donate food for the dinner. Any thing big (over $10) goes into the silent auction. Anything small goes into Bingo. We also have a set group for certain prizes. Ryan's and Western Sizzlin donate cookies for the cookie walk. This year we had a Chinese restuarant donate fortune cookies that we gave as consolation prizes for the cookie walk.
We ask convience stores for candy bars for the candy walk. We got pickles donated for the Pickle Walk.
We don't worry how much each game makes. The games are there as a reward for everyone bringing in money (though they do get tickets for money they bring in).
The Bug Splat game continues to be a big hit. We changed the Duck Pond to a Duck Walk, kind of like a cake walk.
I know that some don't like the King/Queen format for carnivals, but for us it brings in too much money to argue with.
