One more thing...

We used a Poloroid camera to take the pictures and the film works out to about $1 per picture if you get a good price.

Both in terms of time and supplies, we needed to control how many pictures we sold. That's why we had separate tickets in different colors for pictures vs refreshments.

If we only had film to take 100 pictures (plus some extra for retakes), we wanted to stop selling picture tickets when we got to 100.

Of course, if you go with a digital camera and a printer, you might have more flexibility. (You'll still have the time issue to manage.)

Here's a copy of our donation/volunteer flyer (of course, the real one was formatted nicely and had some graphics). I think this was the year we were trying to move to the more universal name. We also have this activity on our volunteer form completed at the first of the year. As I said - typically we literally have more volunteers than we can assign.

***********************

Breakfast with Santa and Holidays Around the World

PLEASE HELP TO MAKE THIS EVENT A SUCCESS!

We need the following:

</font>

• contributions to fill our Boxing Day boxes, items such as small/travel-sized soaps and toiletries, snacks, non-perishable goods, holiday-themed surprises, and other items. (Once filled and decorated, these boxes will be given to local nursing home residents by our 2nd graders during their December visit).</font>
• boxes (shoe box size or smaller)</font>
• ribbon, glitter, spangles, and stickers to decorate the Boxing Day boxes</font>
• volunteers to work during Breakfast with Santa
  
  All donation items need to be given to {teacher mame] ASAP, who will have a collection box set up in the gym. If you can volunteer an hour or so, please send in the following volunteer form or contact XXXXXXXXXXX. We need help for setup on Friday evening and during the event Saturday morning.</font>

Volunteer Information

YES, I would love to help! Call me!
My name is______________________ and I can be reached at _____________________.

My child is _____________in Ms./Mr.____________’s class.

PTO’S BREAKFAST WITH SANTA CELEBRATION
SATURDAY mm/dd/yy 8:30-11:00AM

***RETURN FORMS TO XXXXXXXXXXXXXX***

I'll copy in an overview we provided one year for our volunteers. As soon as they arrived, they were given this to read and assigned to a station. It's a pretty good blueprint for the whole program. (I'll remove some actual names.)

******************

First, THANK YOU for helping with Breakfast with Santa. We appreciate the assistance and think everyone will have a great time! Here is some basic information


</font>

• Coordinators are {Name1} and {Name2}. Please ask one of them if you have a question.</font>
• Santa will arrive via fire truck at 9:00.</font>
• All tickets are sold at the desk in the foyer. Accept only tickets, no cash. And be certain you take the RIGHT color ticket for the activity.
  --- Refreshment tickets cost $1 and are YELLOW.
  --- Picture-with-Santa tickets cost $1.50 and are GREY.</font>
• Refreshments will be served in the food service area of the cafeteria. For each YELLOW ticket, the person gets one donut and a cup of orange juice OR a packet of cocoa. (Adults can have coffee.)
  
  The coffee and the hot water for cocoa are on the table just outside the food service area. Refreshment volunteers need to serve the food and keep an eye on the coffee/hot water supplies. The hot water for cocoa should be refilled throughout the morning so that we never have to worry about heating an entire urn from scratch. The commercial urn of coffee takes 45 minutes to brew. If we run low, we may make additional coffee in a household size pot and add to it.</font>
• Crafts – There should be enough supplies for every child to make ONE of each of the four crafts. The crafts are:
  --Popsicle Reindeer
  --Holiday Windsock
  --Pom Pom Candy Cane
  --Bead Wreath
  
  A sample of each craft item is displayed and all the supplies are organized so that the child just needs to pick up a baggie for each craft. Try to keep the craft supplies contained to the two craft tables at the south end of the cafeteria.
  
  Note: The Popsicle reindeer will need some time to dry. Ask the children to put the reindeer on a paper plate to dry. (They should write their names on the reindeer or the plate.)
  
  {Some years, we had 2 or 3 adults with hot glue guns so as to avoid having projects that needed a lot of time to dry.}</font>
• Pictures with Santa – Each child should wait in line and present a GREY ticket to the photographer as it is his or her turn to sit in Santa’s lap. After visiting with Santa, they should walk to the left and around to the front of the table to pick up their picture.
  
  **If a picture is truly out of focus or unacceptable, we will retake it. However, if they just don’t like the facial expression, etc., they need to buy another ticket if they want a re-take.
  
  **It’s fine if a parent also wants to take a picture with their own camera.</font>
• Christmas Karaoke – This should be a lot of fun. We want LOTS of singing throughout the whole morning!
  
  If children are looking for something to do, direct them to singing. If your own children want to be “helpers”, we always need more help with Karaoke.
  
  The Santa line was purposely positioned next to the stage so the children could watch or join in the singing as they stand in line.</font>
• Clean Up – we will need some help for clean up if you are available. Mostly, we just need to put everything away, so it should go pretty quickly. (We hired the school janitors to do the custodial work like sweeping and mopping.)</font>

[ 11-16-2004, 07:10 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]

What an excellent idea!!!!! Do you have any paperwork on it that you could send to me?

thanks JHB, that was very helpful. Alot of good ideas, As this is my first event I want all to go well!! Appreciate you advice.

This is a very popular event in a lot of elementary schools. In recent years, many have expanded it to appeal to a wider audience, so sometimes it has other titles. Ours has been "Holidays Around the World" for the last 4 years, but people still call it "breakfast with Santa". (For this post, let's just abbreviate to BWS) You might want to do do a search on the Forum as there are a lot of previous posts on it.

For ours, it's a break-even activity and we usually spend/make right at $500. It's held on a Saturday early in December (something like 8:30-11:30). There's no charge to get in or for many of the activities, but you can buy tickets for refreshments. Ours varies from year to year, but here's some of what we've done.

Craft/Game Stations - we have 3-5 stations where winter, holiday, or religious crafts or games are held. Some years the theme has been more religious and might include making a Christmas Ornament, making/playing with Hanukkah Dreidel, coloring a kwanza picture, making a paper lantern to celebrate Chinese New Year, etc. Other times, it's been more seasonal so might be making a popsicle and glitter snowflake, a candycane reindeer, and holiday placemat. Regardless of what you do, there are stations staffed by adult helpers. (Key tip - avoid anything that involves a lot of glue or paint that will still be wet when they try to leave.)

Charitable Project Some have a canned food drive or other activity. At our school, one of our grades always visits a local nursing home with a gift box for each resident (socks, lotion, etc.) We usually pair this with BWS where people are asked to bring shoe boxes, decorating paper, and donated items. (The donation requests go on elsewhere also.) But at BWS, kids decorate the boxes. Either it can be tied to England's Boxing day, Christmas, or just a charitable event. (Note - need to be careful that small children understand they are LEAVING this box behind to be used for the trip to the nursing home.)

Christmas Karoke - a big favorite. Ours is held in the cafetorium (cafeteria with a stage that can be used for presentations). So the music teacher has the karoke machine setup on strage and the kids belt out tunes as a group all morning.

Refreshments We have coffee, juice, hot chocolate, donuts. People can buy tickets for these.

Santa Santa arrives in some dramatic way - like on a firetruck or on the back of a police motorcycle. Then he settles in to an area with a backdrop and rocking chair so kids can have their pictures taken. I think it's usually $1.50 - $2.00, just enough to cover the Polaroid film. (Making a photo holder may also be an activity.)

One last thing - at ours, this is the most popular event of the year and we typically have more volunteers than we know what to do with. Since we don't want to turn ANYONE away, the committee chair sometimes has to be pretty creative finding stuff for everyone to do. (It's such a nice, rare problem!)

There are a million things you can do and this post has gotten pretty long, so I'll stop here.

Have fun!

[ 11-11-2004, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]