We had a Spring Hoe Down last year in a school of 850+ children. It was a lot of work but so worth it!
The first thing we did was make a list of booths we wanted (Fishin' Hole, Knock down the Bottles, Hair Painting, Tattoos, Duck Pond, Spin Art, Rope the Cattle, Cotton Candy, just to name a few) and then posted a list so teachers could sign up for the booth they wanted to run. We left blanks on the bottom of this list if someone had a new idea for a booth that fit into the theme. Half the battle is finding volunteers to run these booths and we asked teachers to appoint parents of children in their classroom to work the booth for a 30 minute shift, but ultimately the teachers are responsible for setting up and running their booths.
For budgeting purposes, it's much more economical for you to make your own booths than buy a ready-made one. Plywood and a saw, sew some beanbags and voila you have a bean bag toss.. or you can toss ears of corn and paint some pigs on the plywood and call it "Feed the Pigs." "Rope the Cattle" was just steer horns stuck in a bale and the kids had to lasso it to win. For the Fishin' Pond, one mom made curtain out of cute fish material with a curtain rod on top to put between a doorway. In "Pencil Pull" you can just stick the pencils right in a bale of hay after painting about 30% of them for the prize winners. If you don't have the help/support of handy tool-hauling volunteers, you can buy a few ready-mades in any Oriental Trading/RINCO/novelty supplier.
The key to a good carnival is organization. Ask for reliable volunteers early. Map out ahead of time where everything should be placed (specify booths, bales of hay, individual chairs, tables) and hand out maps to those helping you set up. Order prizes weeks in advance; we organized prizes by booth along with a manila envelope with the teacher's name on it to collect tickets. It was easy for the teachers to set up their booths, they just grabbed their box of prizes & booth supplies. One Boy Scout troop sent many volunteers to help us out with booths, and in exchange, some of the Scouts ran an ice cream booth and profits went to their troop.
For a Western theme, call around for your local feedstore. We paid them to deliver and pick up bales of straw (more durable than hay) and we placed the bales around as decorations as well as makeshift benches and tables. Our P.E. teacher taught all the kids how to line dance during P.E. classes a few weeks before the event and she ran the line dancing for the carnival. We bought cowboy hats for all the kids that attended (we had anticipated an attendance of 300, maybe 400 people) and ran short because approximately 1000 people actually attended. Not bad for our parent group, since we had never run a carnival before and the previous year's group didn't leave us any notes or help so we really had no clue.
I'd be happy to email you with more booth ideas and carnival tips that worked for us, if you're interested. My email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Have fun!
