I'll seond Denise. Dinner might be more enjoyable to the dads, but it's a lot more cost and work for the moms who do the volunteering. We had over 250 attend our first and expect at least that many tomorrow for our second (school size is 720 kids). They're in, eat, out, and we're cleaned up in about an hour and a half - my kind of event!

We kick before school care out of the cafe/gym and into our Media Center for the DwD morning. We also have a huge parking problem in the morning, but we address it with temporary ramps to allow people to park on our grass, and a couple of volunteer (mom) parking attendants to direct traffic. (Please pray with me that we don't get the 2" of snow this evening that is predicted - talk about a mess in the morning!).

All that said, our preschool does a "VIP Dinner" every year. Each child gets to invite one VIP (often it's dad, but not necessarily) to the school for a spaghetti dinner. I think they charge a very nominal fee. The dads and kids eat in the gym, and then get to visit the classroom. Short, sweet, and fairly easy to do.

We have a similar problem except instead of school buses ours is parking in general as well as space. The before and after school program is located in our school and they take up the entire gymnastium. They start at 6:30am and kids show up there throughout the morning. For us doing a before school function like that is completely out of the question.
We are entertaining the idea of Dinner with Dad and seeing if we can get the local Papa Johns or similiar to donate pizzas or give them to us at cost. Of course all this would have to happen next year but members seem a little more relaxed with the idea of dinner instead of donuts.

Our primary school is at a loss for ideas right now, as well. We are unable to do a morning Dad/Mom event due to interference with the buses, etc. So, we're trying to come up with a fun after-school/evening event. Pizza/dinner seemed like a good idea, but it gets pretty expensive (our DwD at the elementary school had 600 attendees). Maybe dessert with Dad? Start a little later to give Dads a chance to get home and then back up to school with the kids, and have us provide juice & cookies/brownies. Any other ideas?

Not sure what I think about that idea. We just had our second Donuts with Dad and it went great. The children are really excited to have Dad bring them to school, something that rarely happens for most of them. I got feed back from one mom. According to her son, "it was the best day of his life." When she asked why, he explained, "because Dad came to school with me." What makes this really special is that Dad is actually a step-dad, the child lost his biological father when he was very young.

Don't think we will make any changes to our Donuts with Dad. That child's feeling have touched my heart and knowing what it meant to him.

has anyone tried Dinner with Dad? On a field trip today, I mentioned the Donuts with Dad idea to one of our dads to get his opinion. He liked the idea of dinner better than donuts, so I was wondering if any of you had ideas, flyers, etc.