Hi TXmommy,

You have some great questions about carnival prizes -- I would like to share some of my many years of experience volunteering in this area.

It is not tacky to give away McDonalds toys -- but just be sure they are unused and in the original wrap! One note -- its a great idea to ask for the "under 3" or "toddler" toys because almost all other toys are not safe for your toddlers who tag along with older school aged children to the fall festival.

Also, it is a great idea also to have Goldfish snacks packs and animal crackers or cookies once again for your younger crowd of toddlers --- so put those at the games the little ones play like the duck pond, go fishing and other games your little ones play. (Your 4th and 5th graders will think those snacks are for "babies".)

You sound like a very practical person -- you want to give the kids something they will use and not just play with for a short while and toss -- I feel that way too but...

In doing carnivals for years, I have seen how excited the kids get with winning a spinning top, sticky toy, small stuffed animal or other "junk toys" we moms don't consider our favorites!!

Of course, you can have some cute pencils, erasers and other items kids will keep in their pencil cases and really use but you would not want to choose those items as the only items the kids get as prizes!

So try to remember those inexpensive prizes are a hit with kids and keep the carnival super fun - and that is what it is all about (plus some fundraising too)!

Best of luck!!

We have our fair for over 30 years now-- it has become a huge tradition at our school--- we have tickets that you purchase to play the games-- then receive a different color ticket for prizes-- the tickets get counted at our redemption table then the kids go in and get prizes according to the tickets they have-- it actually goes by fast--- not too hard-- we usually get a variety of prizes for tickets numbers--- we do -- 1, 3 5, 8, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30--- each ticket is like .25 cents when we are buying prizes---

The book walk is such a cute idea We try to get parents to donate the cakes, but with TWO cake walks we need an insane number of cakes donated. Trying to change that up this year.

Lots of good ideas on the facebook page too - thanks!

Las year was my first year hosting our school Harvest Festival and I was so overwhelmed going into it. We looked at prizes on Orential Trade but later discovered some things were cheaper to buy at a party supply store. We award prizes at the game station as well, much quicker this way, and we have some cheap prizes but the children love them just the same. We set an allowance aside stickly for prizes before we begin. We also have a silent and live auction at our festival which brings in the majority of our money. For the silent auction we make baskets which are a theme picked by each grade, such as candles, baking, movie night, and so on, and each student is asked to bring in at least one thing for the basket so it is no cost to the school. We take all the items and arrange them in a basket and wrap them up and the night of the festival we do it as a silent auction and make lots of money from this.

Several years back we did the coin trade in (like the ticket trade in) and getting the prizes too forever. We decided to just purchase a bunch of prizes from Oriental Trading (remember to go through Box Tops to get e-points for your purchase) and just put them in the game rooms so we could "reward" right away. We had a "try" prize for everyone who played the game and a larger prize if they won the game (or if there were "levels of winning" we had another prize - an example is our PLINKO-style game).

We started purchasing items as prizes for students who participated in the school fund raisers. What was leftover was put in the carnival bin and then we added to it - all together we probably spent about $600 but that amount had been factored into our budgets.

Students pay one price at the door for carnival and game play is unlimited so it was really had to guess how many prizes to get (we also had a small stash left over from the year before). We spent the entire evening shuffling prizes around to make it as far as possible and we did run out of some of the bigger prizes, but no one seemed upset about it. And, the parents were so grateful not to have to wait in a prize line.

We do all the carnival games ourselves and we include the following two that are huge hits - cake/book walk and 2-liter toss. We purchase 100 books for a "cake walk" like game. We also ask for donations from parents for single-serving desserts for actual cake walk. We also ask for donations of 2-liter bottles of pop (and we purchase about 50 ourselves) for a ring toss game - if you win, you get a 2-liter of pop. Last year we didn't have enough room to have the book walk AND cake walk so we combined them and later moved some of the books to other game rooms for prizes.

One last thing - we purchased some bags from U-line to hold all the prizes - I think it was about $65 (with shipping) for 500 bags. They have lots of choices.

Sorry this was so long, but I thought I'd share. I've been there and I know it's not easy. Good luck and hope your carnival is a success.