We run a redemption center based off of stamps also. I normally just ask to borrow them from a teacher because we have no other need for them the rest of the year so why buy them. If a teacher won't you can send a letter out to parents asking for them.
Make sure the room you use has 2 enterences otherwise its a congestion headache. Definately only have adults work it (I only have teachers and PTO members work it) We take an inventory beforehand and an inventory afterwards. Oriental Trading Company will let you return unopened prizes so don't open them all up (you can do a count through the bags, unless its tiny lil things and the package should say) I wouldn't worry to much about if a child looses their card, I'm not sure what you could do about it and chances are with the parents with them they won't loose a card. Try to avoid any games that give out prizes make them all be at the redemption center....you burn thru those prizes at the individual games much faster and its costs more money. I just use index cards, you can find them blank and it saves mucho time of having to make them up
I understand your reasons for wanting to use stamps but because of lost tickets and cost, we use one color of ticket for games and a different for prizes. This is very inexpensive and makes it easier for volunteers to run. It also makes it very easy to establish how many tickets to charge for prizes. We have also had water games and it's too easy to mess up the one ticket a child gets. We set up our prize room similar to Patty's and have done so for 2 years and it has run so much better than anything else. It also makes kids want to keep earning tickets so they can earn good prizes.
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating-in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life. --Anne Morris
We hired Fun Services to put on our School Carnival last fall.
They brought in all the prizes and set up the scale of how much each prize was valued at. And they set up a weighting scale to weight tickets.
In the past, when we did our own Carnival we used punch cards, much like your stamp cards. So you may want to consider a punch card insteac, just a regular hole punch works fine and most teachers already had them.
When we ran with punch cards and did the carnival ourselves we weren't to worried about replacing lost cards.
However with Fun Services, the whole carnival had to run tight and we found their services to be one thing verbally and another that night. I AM NOT RECOMMONDING Fun Services and we will not be using them again for a varity of reasons.
Prize redemption with Fun Services was a nightmare! Ask any volunteer from that area! Needs to be run by adults, not high school kids. We had to inventory everything that was delivered and their count was not right and after the carnival was over it had to be inventoried again. WE did take sheets of plastic wrap, the very wide stuff like resturants use, and cover the prize redemption table after we layed out the gifts and values,,, this made a nice display and allowed kids to see what they were redemping for... use lots of tables, spread it out, cover with wrap otherwise kids pick up an item from 15 tickets and put it in the 5 ticket redemption - you get the picture!
For cards, punch or stamp, I'd use at least a 3x5 size or perhaps even 1/2 sheet! Since we punched all the boxes for punches had to be on the outside edges.
Hope this helps, hope others have suggestions too.
Patty
Our school has decided to try to implement a prize redemption center at our spring carnival. Since I'm one of the co-chairs, I'm a little nervous about making it run smoothly. I know in the long run, we're going to like it and we've have positive responses about the idea from parents and teachers. We've decided to use a stamp type system instead of handing the kids tickets or tokens. I'm hoping that those of you that use stamping can answer some questions for me. First, what kind of stamp do you use? I've checked a local office supply store and the small self-ink stamps are about $7 each. With 14 redemption games that's a significant expense. Also, do you just design you cards and print them on card stock? What size works best? And, what do you do when kids lose their card... I know it will happen!
I'd love to hear you answers to these questions and any other tips you'd like to offer based on your experiences!
