first, go to
www.boxtops4education.com
- they have a coordinator's section that has all osrts of ideas and pdf files you can print and copy ( awards, letters to parents, etc....- You need your school id # and the special password that the coordinators set up.
secondly, we do contests twice a year. We award a pizza party ( or something like that) to the class that collects the most Box Tops averaged out per student. That way, a class of 16 students has just as much chance of winning as a class of 23 students.
We also tell teachers that they have to submit Box Tops ( and you get an idea of the range per classroom) within the range for any given contest, or they won't be eligible to win the next one. Sadly, we had to do this because we had a teacher who, after she won the Spring 2006 contest, bragged about how she had stockpiled them all year and didn't turn any in during the Fall contest. Can you imagine the nerve??
We also did a one-day contest on the 100th day of school. ( which is between our Fall and Spring contests) For every grade that brought in 100 Box Tops ( which we knew we would blow that # away.. as we have 4 classes in every grade).. they would win the opportunity to wear hats on "Hat Day".
Of course it served 2 purposes, one, it got rid of a lot of Box Tops so we could get one more round sent in before the deadline, and reduce the # we would have to count in the Spring contest- but more importantly we wanted a mid-winter spirit day, and we knew we would hit the goal.
It was a good way to create a fun Spririt day! Some classes even made their own hats to wear.. while others had different criteria to add stuff to hats, or wear all blue hats, or the craziest hat, or wear something on your head thatis not usually used as a hat ( like a colander!).. it was FUN!!!