We do Face Painting, Toilet Paper Toss, Cake/cookie Walk, Outdoor straw maze, ring toss (with Gatorade), Nerf Shoot, Tattoos, Pumpkin Decorating (we now do with stickers, not messy like painting was and a local farmer donates the pumpkins!), ping pong toss, Bingo, BB shoot (also do a Little Tikes version for preschool ages that attend), Airplane Ride) outdoors this is a lawn mower pulled toy plane ride, balloon animals & concessions.
We have a festival every year. I ask each student to donate a 2 Liter of soda. The soda is used in the ring toss game and the prize is the soda. They love this and are very excited when they get to take more than one soda home. We also have face painting, loteria (Spanish Bingo), and jumping balls (huge balls where kids can sit and play a race). We also sell food. We ususally raise more than $1,000 dollars this day.
Last year we held a Pumpkin Decorating Contest (Decorated Pumpkin Contest?) and had a pretty good response for a first time "game" at our Fall Carnival.
The kids (or adults!) brought their pumpkin to the carnival already decorated. Be very clear about this, we had people think they would decorate pumpkins AT thecarnival although it said "bring your DECORATED.... But having a pumpkin decorating booth is a good idea. I'd use those mini pumpkin to save on cost - unless you have a pumpkin farmer in your midst!
There was NO ENTRY FEE. To vote for your favorite pumpkin cost one ticket (25 cents). We had a good number of votes for a first effort and hope to do better this year now that people know what is going on.
We didn't raise much money but our carnival looked so nice and lots of people stopped to take pictures in front of the "line up". One of our parents took the booth on and got hay bales to set the pumpkins on to display them.
Each pumpkin was given a number as it came in and we kept a log of who the pumpkin belonged to (get a phone number). We used a seperate tally sheet to keep track of the votes. Or you could place a paper lunch sack with the number on it by the pumpkin to put the votes in.
We made a "Pumpkin Bucket" filled with pumpkin items that came in from our donations (pumpkin trick or treat bucket, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin paddle ball, etc.)_ and stuck in some gift certificates for putt-putt, bowling, fast food, etc. It totaled around $50 so was a GREAT prize! We had to improvise a second and third place prize becasue the kids were asking with "puppy dog" faces. So, we grabbed a couple of things from the auction and everyone was happy. This year we will plan to have 3 prizes.
Mostly the voters were students voting for their friend's pumpkins, but a number of adults stopped by and voted on the "best".
Although this did not raise much money it was fun and everyone enjoyed it. Our carnival has a western theme this year and maybe we can have three catagories of entries - sherrifs, dupties, and the posse (or outlaws!) instead of three places.
So many great ideas. I am very excited. I love the idea for the nail painting station and the trunk or treat. Our festival is late october so this would work great. We have a mom who has volutneered to do a henna tatoo booth. I was wondering if anyone else has done this and how the families felt about it? I think its pretty cool but some other moms said parents might object because of the tatoo part. Would like to hear others thoughts.
Thanks,
Lily
