Our school has a Fall Festival sometime around October 31. It is like a carnival, we also do a Haunted House at this event, this event was stopped off and on over the years but always brought back by popular demand. Man made holidays are what we make them, good or bad. I choose to make them all good, after all it is whats in your heart that counts. You can choose to build your fund raiser around the fall harvest with a little make believe thrown in for a jolly good time. Now at ours we have pumpkin paintings, pick up duck, a book and a cake walk, face painting, football and basketball throw, go fish, and Bingo, we had something for every age. We also had much to our delight, little ones dressed in their costumes, Snow White, Belle, Superman and Spiderman. Fun was had by all and yes we had help from those that don't do Halloween after all the school belongs to the community and all that live there. Hope this helps.
Thank you so much for your kind words of wisdom. I appreciate your advice. Would you mind sharing some of your Harvestfest ideas with me??? I have some put together already, but there is always room for improvement.
empowered mom;145077 wrote: I want to speak to our principal about having a Fall Festival that doesn't have so much to do with Halloween, but focuses more on being about Fall. Is it fair for me to change this because I don't agree with this??? I will take this to our meeting for a vote, but I need some help coming up with an alternative.
We do a harvestfest every year. I have lots of ideas and such for harvestfests. Most of it is not revolving around halloween.
I think you will have to becareful how you word it when it comes to the meetings. There are things I have to "choose my words" wisely at our meetings because I don't believe in certain things either. You don't want to offend anyone because that will bring more upset than it is worth to deal with for anyone. In the same way, you dont want someone to say something to offend you either. I know in our state, even the headstarts aren't aloud to incorporate holidays. They have many reasons but to make it easier they just state no holidays events.
But I think if you have ideas already to present and make it still sound fun and exciting for the kids, you will be successful in your ultimate ending goal.
I suspect you might be able to lobby to change it for next year. I think the level of poor behavior by the children was ridiculous and wouldn't repeat that fiasco without some much stricter guidelines for both spooks and kooks that reacted so badly. It's kind of late in the planning cycle to change things now but then I'm not at your school and don't know if everyone loves this event or not.
I am not big on personal agendas mixing well with PTOs ... especially the leadership but if this is something you really feel you can't support, perhaps you should step back and get a volunteer that can in order to distance your leadership role.
If it isn't that big a deal to the school--then go ahead and see how people react to a change. You can do the Fall festival and perhaps a Fall dance...
I am the new PTO Pres. for my son's school. I just received some papers regarding the school's Fall Festival. I never attended this festival in the past because we do not celebrate Halloween. So as you can imagine, now being the President I am stuck. I want to speak to our principal about having a Fall Festival that doesn't have so much to do with Halloween, but focuses more on being about Fall. We used to have a Halloween Dance but that was canceled due to older students coming dressed inappropiately, DJ's playing inappropiate music, etc. In its place they started a Haunted Hallway. The kids thought it was great, however I have some major concerns. The paperwork I received say we need to post a waiver of responsiblity at the entrance of the Haunted Hallway. This is because some of the kids who got scared threw cellphones, IPods,etc. at the volunteers who were doing the scaring. The volunteers were also kicked and hit. I really don't want to have to deal with the waiver thing, I am considering doing away with this. I would like some ideas on what could be an equally or more fun event for the students. Is it fair for me to change this because I don't agree with this??? I will take this to our meeting for a vote, but I need some help coming up with an alternative.
