We had a dance in February and these are the ideas that we came up with:
- We had a bake sale of donated items. In previous years there was a concern of nut allergies, so I enforced a "no nut tree products" policy. I also had the donated baked good ingredient list at the table so parents could decide.
- We also sold water and juice pouches.
- Since this event was being held on a Saturday (which I have found very difficult, but possible) and right around dinner time we had pizza for sale as well.
- We had free raffles throughout the night. Everyone child who came received at least one raffle ticket and we promoted that if they bring BoxTop$ they would receive additional raffle chances. We gave one extra raffle chance for every two BoxTop$. If you think about it, extra raffle tickets do not cost the PTO anything extra really. For the raffle prizes we gave away some of the school's spirit items (t-shirts, sweatshirts, water bottles, magnets, etc.) as well as a couple of end of the evening WebKins (plus some other dollar store items.
- For the DJ games we had three different ones, each could win a WebKins (Believe me, they are very hot right now, but make sure your Principal would not have an issue with this). Here's the games...
1. "CottonEyed Joe-Off" - Pretty much every kid knows how to dance to the CottonEyed Joe, so we had all of the kids on the dance floor at the same time and then we had a few judges (myself, the Principal, the event chair, etc.) select five of the best. We then had then come up on the stage (you could have them in the front) dancing again and then have the audience decide who wins. We had two winners from this.
2. We had a parent or guardian hulla-hoop contest. Initially we were thinking of having the kids hulla-hoop but realized that there would just be too many that would want to compete. By making it solely for the adults, and the fact that they would win their child a WebKins, it got more out on the dance floor than we thought there would be. We started with everyone spread out hulla-hooping until we had three left that were still going. These finalists were then brought up to the front and had to hulla-hoop five at the same time.
3. We had freeze game where the kids were dancing while the music was playing, and whenever the DJ stopped the music the kids would have to freeze. If they did not then they were out. But we learned very quickly that when you have over a hundred kids in a game like this they won't stay on the sidelines for long after going out. Because we couldn't get it down we changed the game to the "best" dancer.
Another idea could ba a Simon Says game, though you may have the same problem with the kids sneaking back in.
Also I found, at least at our three dance events so far, pretty much all of the kids were out on the dance floor for pretty much the duration. Mind you that we are a K through 4, but your being 3 through 5 it should be similar. Also all of the kids already seemed to know all of the common dances (Mcarena, CottonEyed Joe, Cha Cha Slide, etc.), so you shouldn't have too many worries there. Have the DJ start off with these and all of the kids will go running for the floor.
Hopw this all helps.
Good luck,
PresidentJim