Last year, as a first time President, I offered up the idea of a Harvest Party. Pretty much a Halloween time dance, with games, a bake sale and even a "spook house". Many of the regulars looked at me as if I was crazy, but when all was said and done it turned out to be amazing. Here's some specifics...
- I was planning to make it a "break even" event so had a minimal admission fee of $3 for one child and a family cap of $5. For those students who may not have been able to attend otherwise we gave the teachers some free passes that they could have that child "win".
- We did not promote it as anything to do with Halloween since there are some who think of the pagonistic overtones, but we focused mainly on Harvest or autumn.
- When you entered the party each child was provided a ticket for each of the "party games" and one free pass for the "spook house". When they played the party games they got their ticket into the free raffle. If they did well in the game then they got extra free raffle chances. Raffle tickets could be purchsed as well, as it seemed that some parents wanted to have a better chance to win. For the raffle prizes we had some items that were donated by local companies, such as art packages and such, as well as spirit wear and item, but we also purchased five Webkinz. These were an amazing hit and since the last one was being raffled off at the end of the party pretty much everyone stayed.
- A nice extra was that we promoted that for every two Boxtop$ that were brought in and extra free raffle chance was awarded. This is great as it doesn;t cost us anything extra and we ended up getting over 500 Boxtop$ that night.
- We did allow the children to wear age appropriate costumes. This was made quite clear as we didn't want any older siblings to wear anything gory or frightening. It was also made apparant that costumes were not required/totally optional. We wanted to allow the children to have fun, but try not to offend anyone. No prizes were awarded for anything related to costumes. Even I was dressed up as a pirate, and some other adults and even a teacher were dressed up. Even still, I did have one parent come up to me and ask why we were celebrating Halloween in a public school. I explained that we were celebrating the autumn time of the year, that I went out of my way to keep Halloween out of the party and that we allowed the children to optionally wear costumes because we wanted the children to have fun. Then I explained that we would love to hear this kind of feedback at the PTO meetings and that we meet the second Tuesday of every month at 7 pm in the cafeteria. She explained that she was too busy, to which I explained that I fully understood how busy parents' schedules are and how I myself work 40 hours a week, take Taekwondo three times a week, coach my son's football team, etc.. She then explained that she thought the party was a great idea, but was just wondering...
- For the party games we had a bean bag pitch using a pumpkin I made with holes for the mouth, nose and eyes, gourd bowling and a ring toss using some of the donated pumpkins as targets for the rings (the stems). As explained above, just playing got one raffle chance, doing well got extra chances.
- Raffles were held every half hour or so.
- We had a DJ and held a few different DJ games, which were huge hits. The winners of these received one of the Webkinz. We had the Make a Mummy contast where one child and one adult were teamed up to wrap the adult in toilet paper until the roll was gone. To speed up the cleanup I had a bag of plastic rings (spiders, pumpkins, etc.) and anyone that helped cleanup could take a couple of rings. Worked very well... Next we had the adult only hula-hoop contest. Figured it would be too much to try to get the kids to do this, but fun to see the parents. I had all of the willing contestants hula to the music until there were only three remaining. Then each of them had to hula with five and the one that kept all five up the longest won a Webkin for the child. Lastly we had the "Cotton-Eyed Joe-Off". Pretty much the kids danced to the song, Cotton-eyed joe and judges were used to get it down to a handfull. These were brought up on stage and showed their stuff again to which we had the audience clap for the winner. You could also do a "Monster-Mash Freeze Game", but I found that the kids that were out kept seeming to come back in. If we were to do it again I would make it just a "Monster Mash Best Dance" game.
- The "spook house" was the most popular area of the event. This was not a scary area, as the ages we were looking at were 6 through 10, with some younger siblings possible. Instead we made it an aural and visual stimuli area. When you first entered you walk through a pumpkin patch, with neon lights. This gets you to the mad scientist's lab. We had one of our PTO Dads dressed up as the mad scientist and had neon lights, electricity orbs, smoke, and tests that he was conducting. Lastly they moved on to the old crones room, where two of our PTO members had to go through hours and hours of make up to look the part (kidding). They had a big cauldron and were makking a brew. They had the children help by adding in the ingredients, such as zombie hairs (hair from a corn cob) or frog legs (twizzlers), etc. Each ingredient was in a container, labeled, but they would have to reach in without seeing. You can come up with some really fun ingredients using things like soft cauliflower, corn (for teeth), pretty much anything. We also purchased a bunch of plastic bugs, rubber snakes and spiders, etc. Honestly, this was by far the most popular part of the party, which worked out great as we had the line go right past the bake sale. To make the area I used an old pool cover that I had and we cut it to hang in the area of the cafeteria to make the roon. Funny thing is that it tunrs out that many parents love this time of year and will end up having tons of good stuff for this area (smoke machines, neon or black lights, etc.).
In the end we even profited $500 and heard so much praise for holding this event. This is definitely something that we will want to do again. Also, with the right DJ I fould that without a doubt the K through 4 ages group dances. In fact they seem to love dancing more than the older groups would. Just have the DJ start off with some of the more popular sings, such as Cotton-eyed Joe and Cha Cha Slide and they will come running.
Good luck and if you have any questions about this type of event post them and I'll write back.
PresidentJim
