SM - it's well worth it from lot's of angles. We did one in march, and I still run into parents at other things (like tee-ball this past weekend) that remember it being done.
Here's what we did:
- We did it for one grade to test it out. 2nd for this year.
- Got the licence for $50 (one time use - as I said to try it out)
- We own it, so we used my copy
- I have a projector at work and asked to borrow it. It plugged right in to my DVD player and surround sound. The school had a very large pull down screen in the cafeteria we used (about 10x12).
- The kids brought bean bags, lawn chairs and wore their PJ's (we did it at 7pm at night)
- We provided popcorn (donated along with the maker by our local bank) and juice, water and pop
We tried to recreuit volunteers to help "our first movie night" and no one volunteer helped so my wife and I did it. That's how we choose 2nd grade (my son's grade). It worked out well, because lot's (I mean lots) of parents were not happy and wanted to know why there grade did not get one - and I told them, no volunteers it's not going to happen. I'm not going to do it for everyone. All the sudden, I have plenty of parents offering to help with next years (so we are scheduling one night each month Oct through March, one for each grade).
Overall, it was a huge success - we had about 30 2nd graders and their families show up. The only technical thing we will do different next year is more speakers. It sounded great when we tested it and did the run through, but once you have 100+ people in the room, the quite parts of the movie got washed out.
It was one of the easiest family event's we've done.
For movie night, yes, you provide the projector and screen (or large wall, etc.). We've had groups using large screen TVs. Seems like lots more groups are using digital projectors these days, too. Those digital projectors are becoming quite common for sales professionals (and home theatres), so it's likely there's someone at your school with access to a digital projector. Those connect to a laptop or a VCR for showing your movie.
I'll leave the "did the night work for you?" question for others.
Our Arts & Crafts with Crayola is about five months old now and our survey feedback has been really positive. It's been fun to watch first-hand how good the Crayola people are at knowing the kind of projects that work well for kids.
I have some questions about movie night... Do we have to supply the projector and screen?? Is it something that you guys have had a success with?
How about Arts and Crafts night?
I am just curious to how these projects work?
I dont want to order the kits if it is something we dont want to do...
