We hire the local fitness center to come in for an hour and they bring scooters, balls, etc. and play games with the kids in the gym. This has worked out great. We also have a parent with girl scout connections and they help babysit the smaller ones in one of our classrooms. I think it has helped attendance a bit.

We have babysitters at our meetings--the 8th graders babysit. Some of them do it for their community service and we do pay them in scrip--$10.00 per kid. We have the advantage of having our meeting in the basement of the building where our pre-K and Kindergarten have classes. Our parents love it! The kids love it! We do that so that we have more parents at the meetings. Normally our first meeting has the most attendance so we try to have about 4 or 5 kids there but normally we have only 3! Good luck!

We have used the students enrolled in the childcare classes at the high school.

We have babysitters at our meeting. The older kids 9-12 have to do community service so we have never had a problem getting responsible volunteers. They use our PTO room which has some toys, arts and crafts and drinks available.
For the first meetings we ususally have quite a few kids but it dwindles as the year goes on.
The PTO buys them a small gift at the end of the school year for helping out.


Cindy

We have babysitters at our meetings and it has definetly helped PTO attendance. We schedule 2 babysitters per meeting and pay them $10 each for the night. The kids use the Art room, so, they can work on homework, color, or play games. We coordinate our babysitters with the Jr. High's Community Club and tend to use graduates from our school.

I know at events at our school where baby sitting is needed we ask the high school national honor society and such organizations that volunteer so many hours community service and they are always eager to help. If its a big event we ask for parents to pre register their kids(potty trained only or older) and then we split the kids into age approperiate rooms--we put the older kids in the gym with the basketball stuff and music--toddlers in a room with a craft and toys--etc. This works well for large events(plays, assemblies,PTO/principal meetings)
For PTO meetings--my daughter is usually the oldest child there and she will take them out to the playground or something--most of the children that attend the meeting with the moms are 2nd grade or older and usually bring something to do--but our meeting are not large usually under 10 people!! UGHHHHH!!