Thanks for the great replys! I was a bit unsure as to how to get this started and was dragging my feet. Although I'm ready for summer vacation, I'm also energized to begin planning the Christmas Breakfast with Santa too!!
I think ours usually runs 8:30-11:00 with a budget of about $500. It's a breakeven event. The crafts and Christmas Karoke are free. Refreshments and Pictures with Santa cost. I think pictures are $1.50 and a beverage/donut is $1. Some of the craft supplies are donated; some we have to buy. It's our most popular event and our big problem is we have too MANY volunteers. (Nice problem to have!)
Santa usually arrives on a firetruck or a motorcycle or something like that.
We do a "Santa Brunch". We start it at about 10AM and have pizza around 11. It's so much easier and cheaper -- sometimes we've even gotten it all donated. With that, we've just have chips and cookies along with juice boxes, etc. Might want to consider that. We had stations set up around the hall: a craft station, a large blow up snowman and the kids tossed hula hoops around it; bean bag tosses. They then visited with Santa and we charged $1 for polaroids. It was all over by 12:30!!
Our school is ethnically diverse. As far as religion, the vast majority celebrate Christmas (and usually Santa). But we do have families with different traditions. We want to raise awareness of other beliefs and to celebrate their customs.
We decided to go broader than "Christmas" around the world and usually do crafts or game stations for Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanzaa, Boxing Day, and Chinese New Year.
Our second graders tradtionally go caroling at a nearby nursing home in mid December, and take goody boxes of socks, tissues, lotion, etc. So the "boxing day" station at "Holidays around the World" are donated shoe boxes, wrapping paper, and trim to decorate boxes for this field trip. (Take care to explain to small children that the boxes are for someone else and not going home with them.) Another station might make a paper chinese lantern, or play spin the driedel, make a candy cane reindeer, etc.
We do something similar that's Breakfast with the Easter Bunny. The kids do an egg hunt and some of the eggs have a coin that can be turned in for a prize. Each child gets two muffins/cupcakes and juice. We have one of our Jr. High students dressed up as the bunny as he hops in, gives a little speech and then passes out treat bags. The kids really like it and it's not very labor intensive.
:cool:
