Christmas Fayre - any ideas?

[Mae1]

Has anyone been involved in school Christmas Fayres? Any ideas for stalls / games - basically anything different that may interest people to part with money and raise funds for the school!
Thanks!

[SoupDragon]

They had craft stalls at DSs one last year -for the children to make up kits for bookmarks, baubles etc. All came from Baker Ross I think. The children could also buy the kits to take home if they preferred.

Tattoos, face painting and hair colouring etc are always popular.

[Tortington]

raffles
win the bottle
ticket ending in 5 or 0
tombola
white elephant

get people to donate old keys and then buy a lock and peolpe have to try and open the lock

smae principle with a coded briefcase. put the money inside and if they break the code and open the briefcase they get the money.

cake stalls

at our school summer fayer there was the "human fruit machine" oh it was such a laugh
basically you get pictures of stawberries lemons and melons etce etc and laminate them.

you laminate lots of them and mix them up into 3 speerate bin liners. then 3 people, kids or teenagers pick out at random a fruit from the bag

only the person who pays has to "pull" the arm of one of the bag holders to start the machine - then the three people do a mini dance in a circle before picking out the fruit. it was funny.

[scotlou]

At our school fundraiser they got people in from a pottery painting place - the kids bought & painted a pottery animal and aportion of this went to teh school. It was very popular!
Custardo - love the idea of teh human fruit machine - I'll need to suggest it when our school next needs ideas!

[SecondhandRose]

Some schools have a stall where a child can buy a pressie for their Mum/Dad for 50p or a £1, the school then wrap for Christmas. I thought that was a nice idea.

[SPARKLER1]

Mae1 - I work for Mini IQ a company who sell books toys and games for children ages birth to 12 years. Where do you live? I'm sure there will be a local associate that may be interested in doing a stall for you. They could come to some arrangement with you for something for the school I'm sure. HTH.

[Furball]

If you do have people to do stalls, we've just started a flat price for the table. The last time we had Phoenix Cards they said the didn't do very many sales and kindly gave us just under £4 for the privilage. Osbourne books were as un generous. So the committee has decided that you pay for your table up front say £7.50 or £10 and then whatever they sell is their own.

[Mae1]

SPARKLER1 - I'm in Leeds - any suggestions most welcome!!!! Thank you to everyone who's responded so far!

[Furball]

Art Sreen Prints do things like personilised tea towels and aprons, bags and things. You could get the kids to draw a picture (we asked 3-4 year olds todo pictures of themselves) Then had them printed onto the tea towels and sold them for £5 each or 3 for £12. Most people will have at least 1 if it's got their childs drawing on it and they make excellent gifts for Granny etc.

[auntymandy]

One thing I hears which I thought was nice was little gifts soap, bubble bath etc for £1 behind a secret screen and children can go choose a gift and wrap it for their mum or dad or friend etc.

[auntymandy]

fill a jar.

[Tortington]

bingo

[justmummy]

Our school does 'reindeer food' to sell at the Christmas fayre. Basically it's bird seed mixed with glitter to make it sparkle. It's then wrapped in little muslin squares and tied with ribbon.
They also attach a little tag telling the children to sprinkle it in the garden on Christmas eve and the sparkles help light the way for the reindeer.
My kids love buying this each year and its great fun sprinkling it on the grass and seeing it sparkle.

[SherlockLGJ]

Excellent Just Mummy how much do you charge ?

[justmummy]

I think it's about 50p. I know i happily pay that, its such fun.

[RainbowWalker]

Further to someone's suggestion below, one of the classrooms at our school is always set aside as a "secret" room (long strands of tin foil/crepe paper at the door for children to swish through whilst parents wait out in the corridor) the teachers/helpers inside have low priced items for mums/dads/brothers/sisters that children can then choose and purchase and the adults wrap them whilst the children write the labels.

Usually keyrings/pens/chocolate/smellies...all nicely wrapped and lovingly labelled. Keep a large stash of supermarket carrier bags to give the children to carry their gifts home in to put under the tree, because the secrecy is all part of it!
Because everything is so reasonably priced, it is busy the entire time with long queues out into the corridor - I'd say almost every child in the school spends about a £1 in there of Mums own money, but all the Mums love the fact that the teachers suggest chocolate for mummy almost every time!

[Starmummy]

Santas Grotto, we give the reeindeer food with the gift. We also charge for photos.

Diary dates, £1 a date, wins £100!

Lucky bags, send home a browm paper bag with every child, fill it with at least 50p worth of anything and sell for £1. Lots of people put much more inside.

Always stalls with make your own items, ie badges, cards, door hangers etc

Decorate a biscuit

Cant think of anything else but more ideas will come back to me soon.

[SPARKLER1]

What a fantastic thread. Some really lovely ideas on here. Shall have to use some of these myself.

[triceratops]

Painting christmas baubels goes down well. Anything with glitter.

50/50 tree where you hang a baubel on the tree with your name on it for a £1. At the end of the day one bauble is picked and the winner gets half the takings.

Find Rudolfs nose. Which is a sand tray with lots of red painted ping pong balls in. 50p for three goes and if you get a ping pong ball with a gold star on it you win a chocolate frog or similar.

[SherlockLGJ]

Bump



Anymore for anymore................all ideas gratefully pinched.

[SherlockLGJ]

Bump


Come on, how can I look like the brilliant new girl on the PTA if you lot don't give me ideas to pinch.

[pootlepod]

The human fruit machine is a good idea, we adapted it with Christmas things like crackers, balls made up like Christmas puddings etc...

[jayzmummy]

Jam jar competition.
You can run this the week before the fayre.

Each child pays 20p to enter the competition.
They decorate a jam jar (with a lid) in a festive way...those sizzle and stir jars are excellent because they make good snowmen and santas due to their shape.
They then fill the jar with sweets that are in wrappers.
The PTA judge the winning entry from each class and give a small prize...we used those small selection packs last year that you can buy for 50p.
The decorated sweet jars are then sold at the christmas fayre for £1....if the original maker wants to buy back their jar they have to add a sticky label to the bottom of the jar saying they wish to buy back.

If you run this comp a couple of weeks before the fayre you could get the local paper to cover the competition, which would also give you some free advertising in the local paper that the fayre is being held.

Do you want the reindeer poem because I have it stored somewhere in my old PTA files?

[jayzmummy]

Non uniform day on the day of the fair....instead of paying for the privellege of wearing their own clothes the children donate a tombola item.

Ask a teacher from one of the upper years if their class would like to run a business as a class project.
They buy oranges and cover them with cloves and decorate with ribbon to hang....charge £1.50 for them.
The class can run it as a maths project....costing, marketing,profit,loss etc
Our year 6 pupils really enjoyed it last year.

Games

Pin the nose on the snowman....use a big fluffy red woolen pompom for the nose and get a teacher to dress up as the snowman....really funny!!!

Lapland treasure hunt.....draw a map of lapland and mark it as a graph with lots of squares...people pay 20p to have a go and write their names on the map to say where they think santas hidden treasure is. The winner recieves half of the money raised as the prize.

Lucky dip....use baker ross for prizes and use those white polestyrene pieces you get in packaging to hide the gooodies.

[SherlockLGJ]

Thanks JM


Yes please to reindeer poem, but take your time.


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