We just did a Crayola night. We have never charged for a family fun night but our group agreed that $3 per kids was responsible. We required RSVPs and had about 150 kids then their parents attended also. The kits had more than enough stuff for the kids to do 5 crafts and now we have plenty of art supplies. The crafts were very simple and had quick turn around. I know when I've done OT crafts at room parties you wait so long for glue to dry and you're giving instructions over and over again. So I really liked the crayola projects. In the past we have done sox hops, game night, gym night we always have a great turn out but it so happens that with this we found out that younger grades really appreciated having simple projects for the younger kids. Crayola Craft night was very turnkey. We also used our Hospitality committee for snacks.
We will be having our second craft night on the 18th during conference night. We do this as a free family night. We did look at the crayloa products but felt that it would cost us to much to use them. so we looked through kids craft books, etc. Last spring when we did it we ended up with 12 craft stations that were different age approiate. We spent around $800.00 on it, but we got alot of supplies that we now have(funnels for sand art, spin art machines, etc) Our crafts this year will be boondoggle, spin art, sand art bottles, foam door knob decorations, a holiday banner, beaded crafts, a reindeer decoration, a snowmnan ornamnent, a candy cane ornament, mosiac place mats, a pin wheel and one other one. we are forunate that we have alot of excess odds and ends that this night will cost us very little money $300.00??
As far as rsvp we did that for our first ever fall fest, for our count last year we took our numbers from other events and added 50 students. Now this year we took last years count and added 50. How do we know our count? each child could do one sand bottle and we stamped their hand, we knew what we started with. Thats a pretty good guesstimate!! It is alot of fun, I wish we could do the premade kits from OT or crayola but since we are doing this as a family night with no charge we need to watch our cost. We do a series of about seven or eight nights free of charge to our families...good luck it is a ball. One word of advice have baby wipes on hand at each station!
"When you stop learning you stop growing."
Our first craft night is next Fri.
We ordered the kit & reviewed everything deciding on a different approach.
We scoured the Oriental Trading site & catalogs. Then we chose 6 crafts, printed flyers asking parents to pre-order. (2 crafts 2 pieces of pizza & a salad for $5) In most cases parents will share the food & buy additional crafts seperate. We will also have on hand free crafts.
Our purpose is not to make $$ but to bring the school closer together.
We ordered our supplies through the box tops for education site earning our school 5% plus used an internet coupon oriental sent me. We saved over $60 plus received free shipping.Pizza will be ordered through Little Cesars or Papa John's @ $5 per pizza. We are expecting a great turnout!
Our fall carnival was 10/22. We sold 300 all access bracelts for $10 (inl. meal)& made over $3200!! Not bad for a school of 500! This is all thanks to the family nights we have run for fun not profit!
I'll let you know how craft night goes!
We too are planning our first family craft night this year. I ordered the planning kit today, but is there anyone who has already hosted the Crayola craft night that is willing to share their experience? How does it all work? Anything you would do differently next time around? Did you charge for attendance?
You can order a planning kit from this very site! We are planning to try our first Craft Night this December so I need to get my kit ordered(I was hoping someone else would take it on, but no luck!). I'm thinking we may send out invitations and ask for RSVP so we know how much supplies to have. I was thinking of having about 7 or 8 different projects. One may be just a "use your own creativity" table where we will put out all our bits and pieces of leftover supplies from our Craft Day project we do with the kids during the school day in December. WE have lots of small quantities of stuff left over from previous years and the previous chair people would love to have it out of their basements!
We are talking about doing a craft night late this month. I am not sure how many crafts to have or how to set up to keep it flowing and not tripping over each other. We have 900 students at our elementary school. Help!!
