I LOVE the idea of "Trunk or treat" but our uptight school principal has banned Halloween in any way shape or form.
All we can do is "Harvest Themed" things. Any ideas on translating trunk or treat to Harvest?

Michelle B.
Our Kindergarten Storybook Parade is the Friday closest to Halloween. We have a VERY large Southern Bapist church down the street that a lot of families attend, so we need to get away from "Halloween." So, the kids dress in their favorite storybook character and carry a book with the character in it. They parade around the school to all grade levels. Kids come out of their classrooms and watch. They love it. Even the teachers dress for this one. We have one teacher who dresses every year a Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. The kids (girls) love her shoes.
The older kids do a lot of ooo's and Ahhh's as they walk by. But all in all it easy and a lot of fun.

If I did get the Trunk or Treat from you. Thanks for sharing . I know it came from this website. So, who knows.

Thanks again for the input,
Gracee [img]smile.gif[/img]

It sounds fine. It may seem like alot but it sounds like you have the volunteers. The only concern I would have had is just a handfull of people willing to help out, then you'd probably want to scale it back but it sounds like a good year.
Trunk or treats are pretty easy to do- (you may have gotten it from me...) our church has been doing it for years. All you have to do is maybe organize a few indoor games (if you want to) and maybe some snacks (one year we served chili and hot chocolate- really easy to do) You let the parents know you are doing it and encourage them to decorate their own cars, have their own games out of the trunk of their cars. Maybe give a prize for the best car, costume. Most of the work is really on the people who bring their cars. They also bring their own candy.
Ice cream socials, you really just need people to scoop ice cream and maybe you ask them to each bring their favorite topping- then you only buy the ice cream, again, pretty easy set up.
Boo Hoo is primarily Kindergarten right? So you're not putting too many events on the school as a whole. Same thing with the Kindergarten storybook (I'd be interested in hearing more about that one)
It sounds like your two main events are your fall fest and the carnival and if they're spaced out enough it's certainly doable.
Holiday Shoppe is fairly low maintenance, (again it's an issue of volunteers so you have that covered) Variety show is the same too?

I'd say go for it. It sounds like a great year!

Well, my 2¢ is that:

- if the principal oks all the activity

- if you have all the volunteers to organize and run all the events

- if you have the budget to pay for all the events

- if your organization is happy with the amount of events

- if you're not asking too much from your families...

then it's not too much! Also, it seems like more when it's all written down in a list. LOL!

Good luck with all your events! We're going to nearly double our events for the upcoming year, including a lot of family activities, but not increasing our fundraising. So we shall see how that pans out. [img]smile.gif[/img]

I have been planning our school calendar this spring and have learned many GREAT ideas from this wonderful web-site. Now, I have a problem. I think I have too much FUN stuff in it.

I start off with an Ice cream social in August when the kids meet the teachers, August: the Boo-Hoo Breakfast, Aug/Sept,2 big fundraisers, Oct, Kindergarten storybook Parade, Trunk or Treat.
(I stole that from someone on this site.. [img]smile.gif[/img] Thanks) Nov. Is the Fall Harvest Fest & Bazaar,and Reading week where we do a book swap with a family reading night.
Dec, Holiday Shoppe, Jan,Spagetti Dinner & Movie Night. Then the end of January we start planning our Spring Fling (Variety Show) and that takes a ton of people as so does our Carnival.

Is this too much? Some of this is for Families to come and enjoy. But then we only do 2 major fundraisers 1/fall & 1/spring. That is when all the kids are asked to participate. Then the (Nov)Carnival & (Apr)Variety Show

We are a large k-6 school of 1,100 kids and believe it or not we have 361 volunteers who do give over 21,000 hours. Some do a hour and the rest of us see it a as full time job.

Our budget this year is $17,100 that we have to make. We always like to have an extra $5,000 for long term projects.

Thanks for any advice.
Gracee [img]smile.gif[/img]