We also have a fall family night but ours isn't a fundraiser. We do old fashion games such as sack races, pumpkin seed spitting contest, and ghost kisses (a white powdered sugar doughnut hung on a string then eatten without using hands). We have a craft area, take pictures of the families at a fall scene and provide a snack all at no cost.
Each student collects donations. For each $.50 donation, they receive one ticket to use at the Hoedown. The top boy and girl are king and queen. We also have 3 princes and princesses. Anyone who brings in over 100 gets to silly string the teachers.
We also have randon drawings for anyone who brings in money, even if it is only $.50. We give extra tickets to the teachers to give to students who were not able to collect much, plus the kids who have more than enough tickets are very generous. It is really touching to seem them share.
My the time the Hoedown is here, we've made our money so we just enjoy the night. Don't get me wrong there's still plenty to do, but we don't worry about how much money we're making.
This is the 8th year for the Hoedown and we make more each year. It's a pretty well oiled machine.
The biggest reason it is a success is because the teachers make the kids excited about it. There are assemblies with skits. The principal kisses a pig or dresses in her pajamas. The teachers get dumped with spaghetti. They really make it exciting for the kids.
We have a Plinko game at our carnival and it was homemade. All we had was a wooden box with nails in it. We painted colorful blocks on it and at the bottom were certain colors. Whatever color you landed in determined the prize won. We used a ping-pong ball as the ball.
I'm curious about the King/Queen, Prince/Princess contest at festivals. Can you tell me about it? What is involved? How do you charge?? etc. etc. I've not heard of it before.
