Christmas Fair

[NotAsYoungAsIWas]

I'm a preschool manager and have decided to hold a Christmas Fair this year. Any ideas for stalls would be great

Cake stall naturally, tombola...you'd have to get people to bring donations for that over the coming weeks....face painting, santa and his elves....you need to make a grotto for this and buy some cheap gifts...a decorate your own christmas decoration stall is another good one...something simple like cut out shapes to stick sequins and stickers onto.

Sweet jars always went down well at our school. As a homework project, children were asked to decorate and filled jam jars with sweets/party bag type toys as donations to the Christmas fair. Kids were also given a cancellation to buy back their own jars - most did.

Given a chance - not a cancellation

Lucky dip

We do a Santa’s grotto. It’s a pain to set up, doesn’t make much money, but the children love it.
We also have the obvious cake sale, and we sell non-alcoholic mulled juice (most of our families are Muslim, so real wine wouldn’t sell). We have a mum who sells samosas, pakora and so on.
Face painting always goes down a storm. We have a craft room, we’ve done beaded bracelets in the past, decorate a bauble, decorate a tea light holder, ice a biscuit etc. We always have games, too. Knock down the cardboard box snowman, pin the nose on Rudolph.

Second hand books and toys do very well at ours. Parents are very generous as they like to have a big pre-Christmas clear out, and the kids love to buy it all back.

We also take donations of sweets after Halloween because parents love to get rid of it! Then we sell it back to the kids at the Christmas fair.

We also sell off the lost property uniforms at a €2 per piece of clothing. Clears out the over flowing box of unclaimed clothes!

This year we are skipping on the santa grotto and setting up a photo wall instead with a scene painted by 6th class and lots of photo booth type props.

We tried doing a simple spa room with mini manicures, ten minute massage etc but found adults not really interested as they are with kids and families. But face paint and nail varnish for kids goes down a storm.

All the students make a craft that goes on sale for parents to buy.

We rely a lot on pester power!

Local crafters (about 80% parents) take stalls at a set price to sell their wares. That adds a bit of interest for adults.

Then standard stuff like guess the weight of the cake.

The chocolate tombola always goes first at my child's school. A week before the whole school has a dress down day and every child brings in a tombola item. Infants a chocolate thing and the juniors a gift thing.
There's always a decorate a bun/biscuit thing going on in the dinner hall.

The bottle stall goes first at ours. Also the knitted decs go quick too.

We have class hampers. Each class has a theme i.e. Baby boy, child aged 4-7, chocolate, pamper and each child brings in an item with their classes theme. The PTA wrap cardboard boxes in Christmas paper and make up the hampers. Tickets are sold at the fayre and drawn at the end. It seems to be very popular.

Our school asked each infant to put a small gift (approx value £1) in a yoghurt pot, seal it and decorate it. They then all sell at £1 each
The children love it

Dds School used to have a room that only the kids were allowed in & it was full of stuff donated by the parents, everything was 50p or £1 and the idea was the kids bought one of the things as a Christmas gift for their parent/s. Adults were on hand with cheap xmas wrap to help them wrap the gift ready to go under the tree. It was very popular ( although as a parent some of the stuff I got given was quite odd)

Biscuit decorating is popular & cheap to do - a few packets of digestives, some icing & sprinkles

If you do face painting have more than 1 face painter - it takes ages & the kids get fed up waiting