School PTA - Christmas Fair

[bucksmum]

For my sins I have agreed to be Chair of the Schools PTA (Cos I haven't got enought to do at with working full time, 2 kids, husband etc!) Anyway I'm looking for inspiration as the first big event to organise is the Christmas Fayre. Can you lte me know what stalls worked well for your schools and what didn't and any other words of advice would be great. - Thanks

Our year group do the old bags stall - i.e. unwanted, maybe preused handbags and purses, which are clean. It's amazing, but everyone has some, and we make about 450 euros each year from that stall alone.

Also good is the toiletries stall - unwanted smellies are put into gift baskets and sold.

A smelly tombola - unwanted pressies (got some lovely stuff, body shop etc) worked well for my dd's pre-school's summer event.

Assign each class a 'theme'. The children are asked to bring in 1 new item for inclusion into a gift basket of their assigned theme e.g. Gardening, Party, School Supplies, etc. This results in several large gift baskets which are displayed at the Fayre with a box/jar beside each. Attendees to the Fayre buy raffle tickets and deposit as many as they like into the jar (or jars)of the basket(s) they hope to win. At a designated time the draws are made and the drawn ticket wins the basket. (Asking each family for 1 item for these baskets results in a nice variety of items in the baskets, the only cost beign the materials to make up the basket.)

Hi,
We run a great xmas fair jointly with the village hall (this avoids the issue of Santa 'visiting' too often in the village!).
Last year we did the lowest unique bid game..bought a cheap xmas tree and £20 of lottery scratch cards and hung them on the branches with red ribbon, then for £1 people write their lowest UNIQUE bid to win. Now although 1p is the lowest denomination it might not be the only one....therefore not 'unique'- great game but takes a while for people to grasp it, but a good chance of winning the tickets for a £1 a go and they get a xmas tree too (I asked a local garden centre to donate it!)
Biscuit decorating is also another good option but can be messy!

If your school is OK with booze then have a water and wine stall.

Ask for donations of bottles of wine (standard size) and then have at least twice as many empty wine bottles - screw top is best. Fill the empty bottles with water and put the caps back on.

Wrap all bottles in christmas wrapping paper.

Set them all out on a table.

Each person pays £1 (or more) and chooses a bottle.

For £1 each person has a one-in-three chance of a bottle of wine.

This is great as all preparation is done in advance. The stall usually sells out quickly and leaves the stall holder free to help out elsewhere. Providing you get donations of wine (perhaps ask each member of the PTA and staff to donate a bottle) then everything is clear profit apart from the cost of a few rolls of wrapping paper. Just make sure that you don't wrap all the wine in one sort of paper or your punters will cotton on quickly!

Our top 'earners' are:

Chocolate tombola
Bottle stall - where we put bottles(could be wine, bubble bath, pop etc) on a picture playing card. People then pick a card from another pack and if they pick a picture card they win the corresponding prize.
Christmas Bauble stall - last year we got all the children to decorate a christmas tree decoration ( bought from Baker Ross) and then sold them. Of course all the parents had to buy their childs creation!
We also do a 'Chinese Auction'. We have a selection of good prizes and a tub in front of each one. People then buy a strip of raffle tickets and write their name on the back of each one. They can then put the tickets in the tub of the prize they wish to win. They might put all in one tub or spread them around. At the end of the night one is drawn out of each tub to win.

Biggest seller at ours was always the burger/hotdogs - of course it meant some poor sod was stuck barbequing under a brolly in sub zero temperatures!

PTA also made a tonne from their sweet stalls at school discos - it was their biggest earner of the year. May or may not be a can of worms you want to open depending on your parents.

As well as the reindeer food (seen it done with oats mixed with a bit of glitter as well), can also package up chocolate raisins as reindeer poo, red marshmallowy sweets as Rudolph's noses etc.

one suggestion only

collecting the travel bath stuff from business trips and hotels, people have loads of it

buying vast economy bag of bath balls and cotton wool

between them you can make loads of bath sets which the kids buy for a pound , I liked it because it was a money maker and something for the children to buy for their mums for christmas

We do a lot of the stalls Portonovo said, and tend to ask for a lot of donations. We do this by sending out a schedule 4 weeks before the Fair. So on the first week we ask the kids to bring in filled jars for the hook a jar stall, and they get a small choccy bar as reward, the next week it's chocolate for the choc tombola and they get a small bag of sweets, the third week would be unwanted toys and gifts and they get a lolly, then the final week is bottles and they get a free go ticket. It works really well and we end up with plenty of items for the stalls without a huge outlay.

i want to go to the old bags stall is that bsb

I wonder how the 2006 Christmas Fair went. And whether bucksmum is still the chair of the PTA :)

Hi - only got involved with our christmas fayre last year but these ideas really work.

The children are allowed to have a mufti day where they have to bring in a Jolly Jar (empty jar filled with sweets, small toys etc and decorated with stickers etc.) to wear mufti that day. The Jars all have a raffle ticket put on and we charge 50p per ticket and everyone wins a prize - the kids love it.

You could also have another mufti day where they have to bring a bottle in for the bottle stall.

Also have a soft toy stall where the parents in the weeks prior to the fayre donate old cuddly toys (in good repair of course). These are then wrapped in clear cellophane and again raffle ticket attached - everyone wins a prize.

Good luck with the organising - I am sure it will be brilliant whatever you decide on.

Hi - assume it is a primary school? How many children are you expecting?

You need to find out as much as you can on what happened last year. Specifically:

1. how many children visited santa (can't run out of gifts - remember siblings will come, but some Yr6 may not visit)
2. what equipment do you already have - Use what you have as it is free
3. how many volunteers you have to run stalls (this will limit the number of stalls you can have)
4. What kind of donations you can reasonably expect based on previous years.

Basically Santa needs to break even (don't look at it as a huge money spinner), everything else should be making money. We charge £1 for santa and this year will be getting gift bags, lolly and clay from baker ross. www.bakerross.co.uk/product-Mini-Play-Clay-P464.htm
Also suggest you operate a ticket system so children don't spend all the time queuing and not spending money on other stalls. Santa needs a police check, sort this with school asap, you may need to do the 24 hour phone one now as rather late. Also an elf helper is essential, especially if only have 24 hour phone police check.

What donations can you expect? Cakes, raffle, sweetie jars and mystery presents, any bottles (bubbly to buble bath) is what we ask for. (Mystery present is basically a tombolla where prizes are wrapped - small stationary, toiletries, gifts etc)

At last yeat's fete we had:

Santa's Grotto

Raffle

Snowball hoop - Get a tinsel wreath and make some snowballs from tinsel, wool etc. Three goes to get a ball though the hoop. Prize is a sweetie from a pick and mix box. Make sure you have somewhere to hang it from (basketball hoop is ideal)

Sweetie Jar tombola - should get donations - Basically jars or paper cups filled withs sweetie (use paper and elsatic bands for lids if lidless) - ask for these soon as lots of sweets left over after halloween usually.

Name the bear/treasure hunt square type game - make your own or purchase (you can usually get one free from Baker Ross if you spend enough with them)

Lolly pick - pick board and lollies (you may already have this)

Cake Stall - donations - Do NOT underprice, these are homemade and people will pay a reasonable amount for them.

Refreshments - tea/coffee/cartons - assume you have an urn..? Check what stock you have already for coffee/tea.

Tinsel Tug - Big cardbord box cover in xmas paper, holes in the top with snow/cottonwool around. Lengths of tinsel sticking through the holes (different lengths make it more fun). Tug the tinesl out, if you get one with a candycane tag on the end you win a candycane. We charge 50p for 3 goes, canes cost £1 for 12 at pound shop.

Xmas Stockings - You need 12 stockings and a large dice. Peg the stockings up on string in a 2at top, 4in middle 6on bottom line formation. If you thrown 1/2/3 on the die you choose a botton row stocking, 4/5 middle row, and 6 top row prize. Have a variey of prizes and every go wins so can charge £1 a go. Look at Baker ross xmas stock for ideas on gifts or try your pound shop. Low prizes should be under 20p, middle under 50p, top you don't want to spend more than 80P really. Need someone energetic to run this as have to restock the stockings as you go. Our school is 100 children and was full on for 1 volunteer. So if a bigger school you may need more helpers. Also I wrapped all the prizes to make it more fun for the children and they all looked similar that way (size shape) but it took ages!

Mystery Present Tombola - Donations as described above, you will need paper to wrap and lots of time to do so! Ask for these donations to come in before the day. This stall should be high profit maker as mostoly donations.

Face painting - you may already have a kit so check before you buy anything. Make some Xmas designs in advance otherwise the dc spend ages picking - Xmas pud, xmas tree, fairy, snowman etc

Rudolph's carrot pick - box of sand with a dozen carrots half burried in it. Some carrots have gold ends. If you pick a gold one you get a pick & mix sweetie. Paint doesn't work, i resorted to metalic gold pen to make the colour hold.

Good Luck. It's hard work but great fun and so rewarding. :)

We have a competition among the kids at the school to decorate a jar filled with sweets etc then the jars get flogged off at the fair, always gone in minutes!

We have lots of plain biscuits (usually rich tea) that the children can decorate with icing and sprinkles, etc. Messy but they love it!

Oh yes GGM that's a good one. I forgot to list the craft stalls we run which includes the decorated rich tea biscuit. We also do simple crafts which you can buy packs for, or make your own up like glitter baubles, wrapping paper printing etc.
Just bear in mind you will need helpers who don't mind 'messy' stalls and also time for things to dry if making craft items involving glue/paint.

hi i make handmade headband and clips etc and are looking for any christmas fairs or craft fairs to attend

It was our christmas fair on Friday and we have loads of wrapped presents left from Santas grotto. We charged £2.00 to see Santa and each child got an age-appropriate present. If anyone would like any presents then let me know - £1.00 each giving you £1.00 profit per child
Boys and girls 3-5 - colouring books
Girls 5-7 - Shell bracelets that change colour in UV light
Boys 5 - 7 - soft fluffy grizzly bear
Girls 8+ - sand lizard key rings - these were a real hit and many girls came back to get a different colour / different animal
Boys 8+ - a Rubiks cube key ring - another real hit and currently on sale in Tescos for £4.50.
Postage at cost. Let me know how many you'd like of each and I'll see what we've got. But we've got about 125 in total I think.

To get donations for the tombola have a non-uniform day ie. every child can come to school in their own clothes in exchange for a tombola prize. Run a childs and an adults tombola on the night.

Mulled wine (and other alcohol) available on the evening.

Goody bag (or jam jar) stall -ask for donations beforehand of sweets, party bag type tat etc. Put these in bags or jam jars with a playing card by each. Children pay 50p, draw a playing card from a pack and find the matching bag/jar.

You've got to have a splat the rat! Best fayre game ever! (and you can keep it somewhere for the summer fayre...)

I have fond memories of winning my 3 goldfish at the Christmas fayre when I was in reception; but not ideal these days, I suppose (and even then that was the one stall I was told not to have a go at!) Have plenty of games stalls though - if the DCs are having fun the parents have longer to browse the bricabrac

Make your own Christmas decs kits always went down pretty well too; things like a few sequins, ribbons and felt bits for a tree, angel, star etc. Proper cotton hankies folded into brollies, that kind of thing. Oh and there was a craze one year for those heads made of tights full of sawdust which grew cress/grass "hair" if you watered them (again cheap and quick to make)

If you have a good enough mulled wine stall you should be able to flog most things imo

Placeholding. Sorry for dredging up old threads. Might be handy for others too, though!