Sonny Fenwick is an artist, an art car creator, a bubble performer, and a self-published author. He drew upon the creativity of his art car as a focal point for a series of children's books. The first in the series of adventure and learning books is "The Bubble Truck goes to the Moon."

Through his real-life adventures with The Bubble Truck, Sonny has had many wonderful experiences. He has traveled across America making bubbles at a wide variety of venues, including children's hospitals, pre-schools, art car shows, city-sponsored events, parades, and private birthday parties. He created his own publishing company, Happy Happy Joy Press, to get his message out to children. This puts Sonny is a different category from traditional authors. He has all of the responsibility of creating his books, from hiring an illustrator to creating the cover design to marketing them. Sonny feels this gives him more understanding of the life of a book.

Sonny is now sharing his knowledge with students during school visits. Believe it or not, many people never meet a writer until adulthood. Fortunately, times are changing. Students today have the opportunity to meet and talk with authors in their schools. Having a writer visit their school can open students' eyes to the realities of the writing process, the wonders of the world, and perhaps even to the possibilities of writing as a career. Sonny's visits may include talks on his writing process, the creation of an art car, or the science and art of bubbles. There should be scheduled time for the students to experience The Bubble Truck hands on -- that is, outside. The children will get to experience a truly one-of-a-kind creation.

Please email Sonny at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or visit his web site, The Bubble Truck, Your Next Party's Fun , to request a school visit.

Thank you.
Sonny

Our school has an annual Fall Festival in October. All of our classrooms particiapte in setting up certain games, cotton candy, popcorn, meal tickets for nachos and hot dog-chips-sodas. We have 3 inflatables and we sell tickets for the cake walk and lollipop tree. This is ALOT of work though it is very rewarding. We presell wrist bands for $15 and $20 day of. The wrist band entitles the child to almost everything with the exception of a certain inflatable, cake walk and food.


We have averaged a net profit of 6,000 over the last three years. It takes 3 weeks of planning, parent meetings, set up, break down and lots and lots of help. We continue because we love it and most importantly it is an annual school tradition. LOTS of locals whose children go to other schools still come to our fall festival.

Best of Luck!

Hi I am the PTO President for my children's school in Indiana. I was wondering what the name of the company your school used for the 6 blow up rides for only $800.00? I would appreciate that.
Thank you,
Becky

Our school dist. (6th largest in the US) doesn't allow any schools to have jump houses, hot air balloons, pony rides, petting zoos, etc. I wish they did! I want to do a County Fair theme carnival next school year and would love to have a petting zoo there! Bummer!

Our school has used the ticket system for many, many, many (you get the picture--the school's 51 years old!) years. I have convinced them to do a Carnival Card with a certain amount of punches for each game so we don't have to hastle with tickets. This way the child can write their name on the back and if lost and turned it, it is possible to return to them. I want to presale these to cut down on the LONG HONKIN' lines at the carnival. I like the idea of offering an amount of free food tickets with the presold cards as an incentive.

I'm wondering how we should do the food? My dad owns a bbq catering business and the principal as well as the other board members are requesting him to do the food this year. I'm not sure he is going to until after our next board meeing in early Feb. In your opinion, should we stick with tickets for the food since we're cutting down on the ticket use for the games and there won't be nearly as many tickets to hastle with or do cash for the food transactions?

Thanks for your help!
Holly

I guess we have been so lucky, but our system has been in place for about 6 years now and it has not given us any problems yet!(fingers crossed!)Anyway, we have always rented the big blow ups for our carnival plus a parent of ours always lets us use her bouncer as well. We also have each class assigned to a booth for decorating, staffing, set-up, and take down purposes. Which usually means about 30 booths including the food booths and all. We give each booth a large can, usually provided by the school cafeteria, (we have them save the big peach cans, etc for us and we cover the tops with duct tape and leave a small opening for the tickets. We usually have each booth 2 cans each to use, just in case the 1 fills up. We sell presale wristbands to the student about a month before the carnival that provides then unlimited play all day of the carnival for $15.00 each. Presale allows the students to recieve 5 free food tickets if purchased before the deadline. The day of the carnival the wristbands are still 15$ each but no free food tickets. Our food tickets are all 50 cents each as well as each ride/gamebooth is assigned a value to where if someone does not buy the wristband, they can just buy tickets to ride a few rides or play a few games. Most usually but the band (these patient bands are donated by our local hospital)
We do have 2 ticket stations that have 3 volunteers at all times and are kept very busy!
The money is counted at the end of the night, usually by the Treasurer, 2 Board members and the Principal and is prepared for a night deposit at our bank. We always have a police escort to the deposite because of a past situation. We do not have a check or balence situation but will think of that next time. A bit long winded but wanted to share what we have done

Rockne is absolutely right. And you also need to decide what other controls to place - because the tickets are like cash and they need to be protected also.

Here's an ideal scenario - but you have to balance the work involved with the benefit.

Use a cashbox form for each cashier station to document how much cash and tickets they start with, plus any added to or removed from the station that night. The cashiers need to sign for the tickets/money. This needs to be reconciled at the end of the night. Note - these are volunteers, it's unlikely it will balance to the penney, but you can set reasonable standards.

Use a standard form for each station that takes tickets. The form will list all the inventory items (if any) they are selling, how many volunteers they used, note area for any comments, AND how many tickets the station ends up with at the end. (For an extra control, the tickets really should be turned in and counted by a separate group. This is a great task for the volunteers' kids as the volunteers are doing clean up.)

Counting the tickets provides you with historical information (how much was sold at each station) and offers a great checks and balances. When you add up the value of all the tickets redeemed that night - it should be equal to or less than the cash received at the cashier's station. Again - it won't equal exactly. In fact you should have more cash than tickets sold because some people won't redeem all their tickets.

(Note - this also means that you are tracking any tickets given away.)

This checks and balances was our first clue of an embezzlement situation. We had about $500 of tickets used (when counted), but only $400 reported and deposited. Percentage-wise, that's WAY too far off.

Just consider the options, the time versus the risks, and decide what controls to implement for your group.

[ 01-25-2005, 12:20 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]