Any great ideas for a primary school Christmas fair?

[tinselandglitter]

There is a list of stalls which is used each year...including cakes, bottle stall, chocolate tombola, toys, bric-a-brac and books, lucky dip, face painting etc, but we wondered if there might be some easy, more profitable ideas out there? There is always a Santa's grotto, and a busy food stall with burgers and drinks on sale. All prices are kept quite low, to accommodate all budgets, but we would be interested in what other fundraising teams charge. Also, do you tend to make more money when people are guaranteed a prize, however small? We want the event to be fun, and offer good value for money, but we need to make as much money as we can!

[vintageteacups]

Our preschool xmas fair made most money when we invited local businesses to have a table (£10) or 10% of the profit (whichever is greater).

These local stalls mixed with your own fundraising tombolas and ideas above etc, will make good money.

We found that fake tattoos made hods of money (relative to their price). They were really popular and Baker Perkins do them really cheaply.

Another good one (well at Easter but you could do an xmas version) was to find the real egg. So you hard boil real eggs and then have just egg tops and put lots of them in a holder. They pay 50p to have a turn and if they get the real egg (you could make them into santas or something) they get a donated prize that parents have been asked to give.

[vintageteacups]

Whoops - got the wrong company name for some strage reason - I mean baker Ross

[blackeyedsusan]

games to play for prizes... spooning marbles into the hole in an upturned flower pot

transferring peas from one saucer to another with chopsticks/tweezers/sucking up with straws

name the doll/teddy with that as the prize

hoopla, over this score gets a prize vary for age?

[FlamingMagnaFlow]

There was a thread on here in the last month asking similar advice - quite a few suggestions on it. Will try and find it and bump it for you (on phone at mo so can't do link)

[ForMashGetSmash]

Have a look here www.sandlady.co.uk/ all our kids loved it so much!

[cyb]

We ask for folk to donate filled jam jars with sweets, little toys, Macdonalds toys etc with the lid popped back on and covere in Xmas paper.

raffle ticket stuck on top, every one a winner, £1 each, 100% profit

[Helenagrace]

One of our biggest stalls at our Christmas Fair is the children's craft stall. One of the teachers and some parents run a craft club one after-school session a week for four weeks leading up to the fair and they make printed giftwrap, stockings, wreaths (made out of handprints), painted tea light holders (job lot from ikea for pennies), sweets, cards etc which we sell. Always raises a lot of money.

We also have a photographer among the parents and he does santa photos and sells pictures, keyrings etc and we get a percentage. That's always popular.

We also invite businesses to book tables - it doesn't bring in much extra but it makes the place a little more festive.

One we're trying this year is painting children's names onto baubles with glass pens.

[Gubbins]

We usually have various craft activity tables, so for 50p/£1 the children can do things like decorate gingerbread men, make christmas cards, decorate wooden tree decorations.

And the tattoo/face painting/manicure tables always seem to have big queues.

[Nelmum22]

Things that have worked for us - guess the weight of the Christmas Cake, we sell loads of those bouncy balloons (the one's with a string attached and you can put sand inside? can gt from Baker Ross), offer a photo with each visit to Santa's grotto, Meercat tombola?

[Elibean]

Our Foundation team did some great games last year, just outside Santa's 'Grotto' - had bonus effect of entertaining the queue.

The best one, that the dds still talk about, was a version of 'I'm a Celebrity' where they put stars in a glass tank of goo - kids had to fish them out, and won a small prize. They absolutely loved it. Have wet wipes standing by!