We're trying the wishlist this year as well as gift certificates for the teachers. I like the idea of doing it during conference week but ours is in Nov. and our boo fair is in October.
We do our bookfairs during parent-teacher conferences. It is setup in the main hallway of our school so that you have to walk thru it to get to your child's teacher. We also have a huge "wish list" board from the teachers showing what the parent can buy and donate to their childs classroom. It really is big success for us.
We have 2 book fairs. The first is in September, open during the kids library time. It is also open that week one evening - which happens to be OPEN HOUSe, or back to school night.
The spring book fair is held during the week which we have our science fair, which also brings parents into school.
Our Spring Fling is held on a Friday night from about 6-8:30 pm. As I explained, it's a big event and we just plan bookfair as one of the several things happening that night.
My friends' school that does "Donuts with Dad" (in the bookfair) schedule that before/at the beginning of a school day.
Something we've found profitable is to open the fair on another night earlier in the week for parents only, in addition to the end-of-week family night. Since our fair is held in November, we'd had a lot of parents say they'd love to buy holiday gifts at the book fair but couldn't when their children were with them. We target our publicity for that night toward gift-giving, mentioning that we have lists of recommendations by grade level from our teachers and librarian. We've even considered offering giftwrapping, which could tie in with our giftwrap sale.
