You may have to have separate events for each grade level. Our middle school has separate "socials" or dances since it can be difficult to control that many students, but also you want to watch the mix of ages. Too many raging hormones & egos at that age.

we are a school with around 1,200 students. I'm coming from a school with 300 students., Is it more diffecult to find events for such a large school?Some ideas I have are bingo, Holiday dance, Parent /Staff basketball & are you smarter than a 5th grader. I think bingo & a dance would be pretty easy the other 2 I'm not sure about.

If you want to involve parents, you need to keep it on the kids level, but something that the parents are willing to do.

The Amazing Race. Set up in your gym or all over the school various "countries" or stops that the student/parent must navigate their way to. Have trivia questions, games or stunts that one or both must do that is related to that country. They are timed from when they start to the Pitstop. They are given a rest period for bathroom break or treats. Then they start again and go through the next phase. You don't have to have a winner. The challenge of completing the course in a quick amount of time would be fine.
Have each team of contestants start the course 5 minutes apart to avoid crowds and set them on various courses as well (some starting at one end, some the middle and some at the other end)

Sports Mania: student and child have a night to come and play various games (carnival like games) that use skills related to various sports. Just a night of fun

Basketball games - parents against the kids or mixed teams. this can be done as intramurals and every Friday night or something. Great way to get parents and kids playing together & enjoying time together.

Thanks for the ideas! I'm looking for fun family nights, to do after school. This school has not had very good luck with their PTO's in the past and we are really hoping we can turn things around. Please keep the idea's coming ! Thanks again, this site is a life saver!

Here's what I posted on these boards back in December, hope it helps:

Here's the latest one I recently brought up at our meeting...

"Are You Smarter Than a 4th Grader"

This is, of course, based off of the new hit show, Are you smarter than a 5th grader. Since our school only goes up to 4th grade I figured capping it there would work.

The idea is to make this for 4th grade parents and use 4th grade students for the classmates.

Just like in the show, if you haven't seen it, there are numerous grade related categories and questions. For example, First Grade Science, Third Grade Geography, etc. You can get the categories and the questions from talking with the teachers (also a great way to learn about the grade curriculum).

The show can go up to a million dollars. Obviously we aren;t going to do that, but maybe a $100 gift card would be viable for the highest prize (no one makes it to that level in the show)...

In addition, there are lifelines. For example, per the tv show, there's the auto-save where if you get the question wrong but your classmate got it correct, you get credit. Another is "Copy", where you can decide to use a classmates answer without knowing what it is. Lastly there's "Cheat", which lets you look at your classmates answer before you decide yours. Of course, as we don't condone cheating, we would make light of this during the game...

Figured this would be a great night for our graduating class. Flyers can go home and everyone can come out to watch, but only the 4th graders and their parents who wish to play can be part of the show.

In addition this would be a great opportunity to have a bake sale, sell pizza, etc.

I'm even going to go so far as to talk with the music teacher to get the kids to record the "Are you smarter than a 4th grader" music, again just like the show.

Check out the tv show's website to get a good idea.

Good luck,
PresidentJim

Are you looking for more of student-only events or those that involve the parents as well? Do your events need to have a teacher advisor/sponsor for them, or can your PTO plan & carry out events with only administrator approval? Are you also looking for events during the school day, evenings or Saturday events?