We do a craft day for our students. A committee comes up with craft ideas and pulls together supplies. The PTO pays for it. The kids come during the school day and make items to give as holiday gifts. The kids love it and the parents love it because the gifts are things their children made with their own hands-what's better than that?! The projects average around 30 cents each and we do two projects per child. The crafts are chosen based on age/grade level, so they are easy for the kids to do.
We wrap the gifts in paper lunch sacks and cut up old Christmas cards for gift tags.
I won't kid you, it takes planning and plenty of volunteers, but it's all worth it to see the smiles on the kids' faces as they make the crafts and talk about who they are giving them to as gifts.
We also do the craft bazaar. We hold it on a weeknight. We ask crafters to keep prices of items to $10 or less. We offer free gift wrapping and they can have their pic's taken with Santa for a small fee. We usually have repeat vendors. This year we are going to run an ad in a local paper. We usually fill up.
Last year we also did a cookie walk. People paid $10 and filled a pie box with holiday cookies. This was a huge hit and we will be doing it again. We will also be raffling off 3 big Holiday inflatables. We bought them at Lowe's the day after Christmas at 70% off. We are also thinking about holding a gingerbread house contest and then raffling them off. This is still in the "idea" stage and we need to iron out the details.
In the past our school has always provide a Holiday Craft Fair for the students. This event has always been such a BIG headache for the PTO. Trying to find craft vendors with decent quality for Mom, dad, sis, bro. etc... was always difficult. When we hired a company to bring in the gifts, parents always complained that it was JUNK! It's time to make a change. Does anyone do anything different during this Holiday season? Your ideas are greatly appreciated!
