Our school has been doing North Pole Famiy Night for 3 years now. About 1/3 of our previously K - 6th grade school attended this event. This year our theme is "Gingerbread Kids", so if you have any activeity ideas we'd welcome them.
Another elementary school in our district started their Make-It, Take-It Night about 10 years ago and gave us their paperwork and ideas to get started. We offer about 7 crafts and 3 activities (all pre-paid), including pictures with Santa and Santa's Sundae's (ice cream they make to look like Santa).
We always offer FREE activities, such as Gingerbread cookie art, theme coloring pages (at a table for little ones), a wrapping room and face painting. Of course Santa listens to every child's wish even if they didn't buy a photo. Our crafts are sold at cost. This event is meant to break even, but has never lost money.
We do a raffle of donations in conjunction with North Pole. This year we will make it a full blown basket raffle, focusing on gifts for kids and gift certificates for moms and dads. We are a Title 1 school, and these items will need to be useful for our parents.
I will paste last year's invitation below. It is accompanied by the pre-order form.
Best of Luck With Your Event!
Tammy
The Parent Teacher Organization
Invites You and Your Parents to Attend Eastside’s 2nd Annual North Pole Family Night
Craft Holiday Gifts for Grandparents!
Volunteers will have everything prepared, so your families’ gifts go together quickly and easily. You’ll find many wonderful gifts to make grandparents and siblings on our order form (attached). You can also order a Santa’s Sunday (Ice Cream Treat) and keepsake Photo with Santa. Color photos are located at each classroom, and craft samples are located up-stairs in the library. Be sure to take a look at them during parent-teacher conferences.
Order form with full payment is due by Friday, November 5
When: Friday, December 3, 2004
Where: Eastside Elementary School
Enter at the Office Doors
Time: 6:00 - 7:30 PM
R.S.V.P: Students MUST register by ordering crafts with full payment
Order Deadline: Friday, November 5, 2004
Don’t Miss These Attractions:
· Gingerbread Lane Cake Walk: Our thanks to professional decorator “Grandma Alford†for donating her gorgeous cakes again this year!
· Santa will listen to every child’s gift wish
· Door prize tickets will again be sold in the gym at 4/$1.00 to help with the cost of this event. Last year happy winners took home Eastside T-shirts, candle light candles, and other donated prizes!
· Enjoy looking for your children’s art and school work! Students will be busy decorating the school in snow flakes for this year’s event.
· Cookies and Juice will again be provided in the gym.
Forgot to add, that Michael's also usually has a coupon for 40% off any one regular priced item, around here I get it from our local paper and the Chicago Tribune. Michael's usually also has those foam buckets for other holidays too.
Hi, I don't know if there's a Michael's near any of you, but I did purchase some foam buckets from them on sale for 3.88 ea. normally 7.99. They are precut foam shapes ornaments that make 10 snowmen, 10 Santa/wreaths and 10 mittens (30 foam ornaments in all with a hole cut in the middle for adding a picture). I decided that the assembled ornaments would be my contribution to the Holiday Shop at our school since we really don't participate in fundraisers (not enough people to sell to). HOpe this helps.
I am new to this board/website so hope I go about things correctly.
We are changing our Holiday Santa Shop into a Holiday Make & Take this year. My question is - is Oriental Trading the best place to get the supplies? Are there other companies out there just like them?? I know we have to order soon so I'd like to get a jump on it.
Our Kid's Craft Workshop is tomorrow. This year we have about 140 participants out of about 1000 kids. It is not a fundraiser for us either so we don't care how many kids show up.
We have 8 crafts this year with 5 of them purchased from OTC and the other 3 we came up with and bought the supplies locally. We display samples the first of November and send home pre-order forms. We only buy what we have orders for.
We have thought about adding other activities, etc.. to this day but it takes so many volunteers already.
Our PTA held its first Holiay House Make and Take Craft Shop on Saturday. A huge success!
We tried this instead of the Santa's Secrest Shop, didn't know how it would go over. Great responses from everyone involved, including our principal, who, 2 hours into it, asked that we do it again next year.
Basic idea: we ordered items from Oriental Trading, kids get to make crafts to give for Christmas, held a preview for kids to walk through on Friday and sent home a flier with all items pictured on the back.
We had 15 items for $1, 2 items at $2 and 1 item at $5(a ceramic plate that kids draw on-we ordered 48 and they were gone by 10:30)
Parents loved that they were getting homemeade presents that were useful or decorative.
My only concern is that we serve two schools with a student pop. of 700+ and we had appro. 150 kids come to the shop.
Has anyone combined a craft shop and also offered some kind of cheaper, Santa's shop stuff?
We didn't do this as a fundraiser but we still made about $300.
