We recently had an awesome "Fear Factor" Pep Assembly to get our 3rd-5th graders pumped up for their state assessment tests. We had a teacher/staff cheerleader group (that were awesome). I had the teachers nominate one student from each of their classes from K-5. I had three student teams and one staff team.
We started with the physical events. I had the team take balloons, place behind their backs with a partner and travel from half court on the basketball floor to the end of the court, drop the balloon and then pop it. They would then come back to half court and tag a teammate and they would continue. We timed them for two minutes to see how many they could pop. The staff team won.
Next, we had an individual from each team, and they had to take a hula hoop they were standing inside of over their heads without using their hands. One of our student teams won this event.
Then, we had a crab walk relay race, which our staff team barely won.
We then went into scooter timed races with the pusher being blindfolded. The person on the scooter had to tell them to go right, left around cones. Our staff team was the fastest at 32 seconds.
We then went to our eating part of the event. Now, in this part all participants knew that the items were all food but none of the student body knew this. We had kitty litter cake, rat droppings (chocolate covered raisins), day old bath water, and cool whip with gummy worms in it.
First up was digging as many gummy worms out of their cool whip without using their hands. Without our staff team knowing, we had placed no worms in their cool whip. We had a 1st grader win for his team, and let me tell you, I don't think he left one worm in his cool whip. Our staff participant was our music teacher, and she had dug through her whip cream, looked at their judge (the principal) and couldn't believe she wasn't finding any worms. It was great and all the students loved it.
We then went to the rat droppings. This part was great because though I told the teams everything was real food they didn't know either what it really was until they tasted it. Now, we had a kindergarten student who was picked from one of his teams (the team that eventually won the event), and he didn't like raisins. I thought we were about to have an accident on the basketball court. We were prepared though we had a trash can right behind the activities that was on a plastic tarp. To say the least, the raisins went in the trash can. Our staff team won this event with our fill-in teacher for 2nd grade (pregnancy) eating 29 choc/raisins in 1:00.
Next, I had a chugging contest with the day old bathwater (lemonade/sherbert). Our staff barely beat out one student team.
Finally, we finished with the kitty litter cake. They were all given even amounts of cake and needed to eat it within 1:00, and one student team won. They were our champions. I had gotten some prizes for them.
We culminated the event with a pie-in-the-face contest. All week the students could bring in their spare change to vote on a teacher, who had volunteered to have a pie thrown in their face. This became a contest between our school principal and one of our 5th grade teachers. The 5th grade teacher squeaked it out on the last day. Now, because they had both wanted a pie so bad, the PTO bought two pies, and our Title I Math teacher, who was dressed as a bee, brought out one pie. While our principal wasn't looking she brought out the other pie, the student body was just going nuts by this time, and I was losing my voice. We called two students out who won the chance to throw the pies, one was in 1st grade and nervous he got to throw the pie in the principal's face and the other was in 2nd grade and he got the 5th grade teacher every one loved it. By the way we raised $257.00 for the PTO with this event, the PTO used part of the money to by the students new balls and jump ropes for recess.
This event happened two weeks ago and I still have students, teachers, staff, and parents saying it was the greatest thing that has happened at our school in a long time.
Now, I would like to thank all of you on the message boards because without you I wouldn't have been able to come up with all these great ideas, combine them, and make sure the kids had a ball, along with the teachers and staff. I looked up at one time and the gym was overflowing with people and we're a small school. The junior high had heard about it and some of them had come over, and all of our janitors and staff had filled in. If you would like to see an article and some pictures of this event you can go to
www.usd246.net
and it's one of two articles on the website about the PTO, it's titled "Just a Little Buzz". On the same day we also had guest readers in all elementary classes for Dr. Seuss's Birthday.
This was an awesome event on now we're planning our First Field Day in about 4 years. I was elected President last fall, and without the message board and PTO Today I would have been lost, THANKS!!
