Pint pots!

[CustardLover]

Right - my first year with a DC in school and I've just been given a load of plastic pint glasses and cellophane and told to fill it up with 'stationery, little bits and pieces, toys, sweet things and NO NUTS!' and then tie it all up with ribbon.

There are twenty of them! And a pint is big - that's a lot of smelly rubbers (which are frankly exorbitant anyway); any suggestions for things to pop in the pints without bankrupting me? Thank you in advance, I am creatively stumped!

[JimmyCorkhill]

Google party bag fillers and you will get oodles of sites with tiny tat treasures.

[Flomplet]

Don't feel obliged to fill them all. Our school does this with jam jars which it then sells for £1. It's surprisingly hard to fill them for less than that! Don't forget to keep the packaging on, eg a pint of hairclips would cost £££ but a few sweets and a big card of hairclips from the £1 shop does the job.

Marshmallows and flying saucers are the obvious suggestions, maybe in mini bags so they take up more space. Stick a couple of lollies in too. I think you need to raid a good pound shop tbh. Look for multipacks of pencils (5 for £1 inc big rubbers), multipacks of mini notebooks, sticky notes and stickers, a skipping rope, any suitable sized toys (eg knitting nancy toy or handful of matchbox style cars from a £1 multipack), bright coloured gloves, packs of wrapped sweets you can mix with nonfood items, a snowglobe thing maybe, hairbrush & bobbles, kids' santa hat.

cups of mixed lego might sell well but it would prob have to be sourced at a car boot sale to be vaguely in budget, and reasonably clean.

Or mix glitter & oats and do the old "reindeer food" thing.

Tempting to put a can of sprite in each and be done!

[CustardLover]

Brilliant ideas, thank you! I have to admit I am just slightly panicked a to form eg do you fill it right up to the top (presume yes) and what's the toys to sweets ratio - I don't want my first time to look miserly. Lollies are a top idea though, plus I've got a bumper pack of bubble packs too

[CharleyDavidson]

20 of them?

When my DC's school did this they sent home one cup per child. I'd be asking how many are expected to be done..
Doing one each often meant the children wanted to be able to buy their own cup back and doing more can avoid that, but 20 seems like a lot!

[CustardLover]

The reception year are doing them for the whole school so yep, got 20 to do!

[Flomplet]

I would go for a mixture of toy to sweets ratios. Some will prefer the sweets, some the tat. Half full will be fine I'd think, especially if you have something tall sticking up. The full ones will probably sell first but you have to be realistic about it. One of my pet hates about school fairs is when donors spend more to create or source the item than it's sold for - fairy cakes being sold for 10p, for example.

I think 20 is utterly ridiculous though, and a really tough job to give to YR parents. Talk to parents with older children for advice.

Other ideas for cheap stuff - curly straws (5 for £1 in the pound shop) and big sweetie cables that are about 5-10p in our local newsagent. Curled round they will look space filling. You can also get them in supermarkets.

If your DC have any small, no longer wanted cuddly toys, they could go in. Second hand is usually fine for these things as long as it's clean.

Or... make tonnes of popcorn and add some sweet topping and edible glitter. You could even layer it with mini marshmallows or something - you can get huge bags of those in the baking section of supermarkets. Would cost less than most other ideas and is easier to do in bulk. The glitter would really add to the appeal.

Sorry for the brain dump