You are right celementary, there is a ton of planning and behind the scenes work for a school carnival!
If set up right -- your school can make a ton of money in just one day -- so it can be a fun way to raise money for the school! (Our elementary school has made about 15K profit average for a school of about 550 kids)
Some of the games are pretty easy to set up and run, but you will most likely need a small team of volunteers to help you pull off a school carnival. Generally you will want one person in charge of each of these areas:
Food (can have vendors come or serve simple pre-packaged items - talk to your local health dept. for details)
Game and Activities
Volunteers (sign up sheets for classes and contact local middle schools and high schools for help too)
Advertising (around school and local business)
Donations (to help with cost of Bounce Houses etc)
Silent Auction (sometimes the best money maker of the entire carnival!)
Carnival Prizes & Tickets (best to have one person order all the prizes for better discounts)
Decorations
One big tip I have is that most middle school and high school students need to get in volunteer hours, so they can help you run your booths during the carnival! It is also good to have parent volunteers at the carnival too - not just teens!
The most successful carnivals I have been a part of put 1 or 2 classes in charge of each booth so that they can have a parent sign up for 1 hour time slots during the carnival and you have someone in charge of setting up each booth and cleaning it up after your carnival.
We have an elementary carnival every spring. Previously we've used tickets, but this year we are going to try the wristbands. We have the following games:
Ring toss - rings thrown on 2 liters
Go Fishing - fishing pole with line behind sheet
Dino Dig - easter eggs hidden in sand in kiddy pool
Duck Pond - ducks in kiddy pool
Football toss - toss football through ring
Hoop shoot - self explanitory
Goldfish toss - ping pong in goldfish bowl
Wheel of Wow - giant wheel with numbers
Cake walk -
and I'm sure there are a more. We have made most of the games ourselves. the wheel is a giant wheel that a dad made. We also have a bounce house, dunk tank, petting zoo, basket raffle, silent auction, face painting and bbq dinner. We are a small school and can usually net about $3-$4k. We try to keep the costs down so that our families can afford it. We are in an area of high free-meals too. Be happy to give you more info if you'd like. It takes many months to pull off.
What type of games/activities do you have at your carnival? We have discussed this type of fundraiser, however a lot of the other parents say there would be a lot of work involved. Thank you for your help!
Our annual carnival is a small two hour event after school. Our school is CPS, prek-8th grade and the population is 60%+ free/reduced lunch. Scheduling just has not allowed us to do a weekend event. We have about 8 games, craft, that is free with paid entrance fee of $1 /person (student or adult) OR 10 BTE. Last year, in addition to these games there was also Wii Games for $.50 play, face painting, tattoos, colored hairspray or having nails painted or stickers/decals and a cake walk game for $1 each. We added a bounce house for $1 too. If you purchased a wrist band for $10 you could do all activities (one face painting, hair spray color and nails per person. If you need to purchase tickets for prizes, raffles or wrist bands go to MK Brody for small prizes too. The single rolls of tickets are so cheap compared to Oriental Trading, etc. If you live in Chicago, they are located just outside of downtown, easy pick up and save on shipping costs.
Between the games, wrist bands and food concession we took in $1800.00 in two hours. We obtain donations of cakes for the cake walk game and make $400 off this alone. Our items sold in the food concession are half donated and we have little prizes for the 8 games similar to gong to Chuck E Cheese. Our expenses were $500.
Most parents purchased wrist bands for the younger students and out of attendance of 200 we sold 100 wrist bands.
Last year for our spring carnival we sold wrist bands. They were $12 if you pre-ordered them the week before or $15 if you bought them the day of the carnival. We also sold tickets for those who did not want to purchase a wrist band. Tickets were 50 cents each. Most people bought wrist bands because it made the day a lot cheaper...the bands including unlimited bouncing and unlimited games. Food was still an additional cost. The wrist bands really worked well for us. Just make sure you purchase a nice quality Tyvek wrist band as they cannot be removed and shared.
