This is a very popular event in a lot of elementary schools. In recent years, many have expanded it to appeal to a wider audience, so sometimes it has other titles. Ours has been "Holidays Around the World" for the last 4 years, but people still call it "breakfast with Santa". (For this post, let's just abbreviate to BWS) You might want to do do a search on the Forum as there are a lot of previous posts on it.
For ours, it's a break-even activity and we usually spend/make right at $500. It's held on a Saturday early in December (something like 8:30-11:30). There's no charge to get in or for many of the activities, but you can buy tickets for refreshments. Ours varies from year to year, but here's some of what we've done.
Craft/Game Stations - we have 3-5 stations where winter, holiday, or religious crafts or games are held. Some years the theme has been more religious and might include making a Christmas Ornament, making/playing with Hanukkah Dreidel, coloring a kwanza picture, making a paper lantern to celebrate Chinese New Year, etc. Other times, it's been more seasonal so might be making a popsicle and glitter snowflake, a candycane reindeer, and holiday placemat. Regardless of what you do, there are stations staffed by adult helpers. (Key tip - avoid anything that involves a lot of glue or paint that will still be wet when they try to leave.)
Charitable Project Some have a canned food drive or other activity. At our school, one of our grades always visits a local nursing home with a gift box for each resident (socks, lotion, etc.) We usually pair this with BWS where people are asked to bring shoe boxes, decorating paper, and donated items. (The donation requests go on elsewhere also.) But at BWS, kids decorate the boxes. Either it can be tied to England's Boxing day, Christmas, or just a charitable event. (Note - need to be careful that small children understand they are LEAVING this box behind to be used for the trip to the nursing home.)
Christmas Karoke - a big favorite. Ours is held in the cafetorium (cafeteria with a stage that can be used for presentations). So the music teacher has the karoke machine setup on strage and the kids belt out tunes as a group all morning.
Refreshments We have coffee, juice, hot chocolate, donuts. People can buy tickets for these.
Santa Santa arrives in some dramatic way - like on a firetruck or on the back of a police motorcycle. Then he settles in to an area with a backdrop and rocking chair so kids can have their pictures taken. I think it's usually $1.50 - $2.00, just enough to cover the Polaroid film. (Making a photo holder may also be an activity.)
One last thing - at ours, this is the most popular event of the year and we typically have more volunteers than we know what to do with. Since we don't want to turn ANYONE away, the committee chair sometimes has to be pretty creative finding stuff for everyone to do. (It's such a nice, rare problem!)
There are a million things you can do and this post has gotten pretty long, so I'll stop here.
Have fun!
[ 11-11-2004, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: JHB ]