To truly make it education related - how about doing a Read-A-Thon??? People could sponsor the students for how many pages or books they can read in a week, two weeks, or month. Could be doable and FUN!
Watch out for the million penny thing. I saw an artcile where two brothers had bet the one brother couldn't collect a million pennies... well he did and when he went to the bank to cash them in there was going to be a fee.... a pretty substantial fee for the bank to take them. It was crazy!!
We have done a walk-a-thon for 2 years now. Our first year we made 6 grand and this past year we made 10 grand... We solicite local businesses for prizes and then the kids go into the prize room based on their sales. We also do water bottles for kids that bring in a certain dollar amount and then t-shirts at another level. We are a k-5 and have about 130 in our school.. We are / were so proud of our kids!!
The other elementary in my county is doing a million penny drive. Granted this will take years, they have this large container that was donated to them by a bank. I am not sure how far along they are, but you could do something like 1,000 quarters. How much money is a thousand quarters? The could also write an essay on what they expected it would look like. Perhaps that is too educational. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
We have a Spring Into Math, it is sponsored by the FRC and Title I. This is no charge but it could easily be turned that way. The children have a certian # of games to play that all have to do with Math. They get a sticker for each game they play and "bunny money", then they go to the "Bunny Store" to buy prizes with the play money they have earned.
Here's another "a-thon" but it can easily be adapted for all the kids: Hoop Shoot. We bring in smaller hoops for the younger ones and everyone shoots and gets a certificate, even if they don't get any pledges. Good rainy day activity and promotes PE. Good luck!
Our old school's jog-a-thon was always a good money maker and was our only fundraiser all year and billed as such. It can be billed as a healthy active fundraiser tied to PE.
Other units here have read-a-thons, spell-a-thons and math-a-thons (gotta love the thons!) and all three of those have an educational angle. I'm not sure how the math or spelling ones are done but the read-a-thon is based on the number of books read by a student. People can pledge a flat rate or a per book pledge. I'm sure it's a lot less work to set up than the jog-a-thon too.
Our school has a policy that doesn't allow us to fundraise through 'traditional' means (ie.wrapping paper, cookie dough) ~ we are a private school that stresses to families that we do limited fundraising and limited donation requests. HOWEVER, we DO need to raise some funds or we can't put together the programs we want. The director says (backed by the board) that we need to do fundraising that in some way, shape or form relates to education, which means we need to get creative here.
Our first fundraiser this year (oh yeah, and we are limited to three per year) is going to be a sale of personalized children's books.
HELP - I NEED other ideas to present for approval.
