Well, we do the Dads for Donuts for the last 3 years, this is a huge event for us. We do this in the Spring we had over 500 people there. We let the child bring dad, grandpa, uncle, the male person in their life. However, some moms come also --which isn't a big deal. We send flyers and get RSVP for food count. We serve coffee, juice, and milk. The dads and grandpas love this. Of course donuts also.

The biggest problem we have is parking. Some of the teachers complain about this but we tell them come earlier. Ours by the way is 1 hour before school starts then the dads can walk them to class. This year we had a full house, so the ones that came early we made an announcement that if the dads had to run to work --we opened a classroom and turned on cartoons for the kids to go to. Since it was too early to go to the classroom. Next year we are going to have them go to the classroom and have the teacher come about 20 minutes early.

Good luck to you. On this website there are some very good flyers to use.

Our principal was concerned about leaving out a child who doesn't have a "mom or dad" so we came up with the idea of "Pastries with Parents". It was a HUGE success. I got most everything donated from local donut shops, Albertson's ect. We used the money we had budgeted for this event to hire a guy who does custom button pins on site. He took the picture of the student with their parent/family and then made it into the commemorative button, on the spot. The pic was black and white with a red frame that said "Herfurth Elementary Pastries with Parents 2007" Everyone LOVED this and it was totally free to our students, which we thought was very important. We will do this again.
I hope this info helps.
Thanks for all the good ideas...I enjoy this site.

Val--hold a dance--they are easy to do in the gym or activity room, you can get a DJ for 300 dollars and order in pizzas. Voila--instant event. Of course there are other things you can do as well--we held a Monster Mash after our Fall Festival (which included games and Trunk or Treat). The kids had a blast and the parents both came and could socialize easily.

As to DwD--we too allow "other siginificant adult men" never close it to younger siblings (although that is not as prevelant as it is in MwMom. We put out games and cards and chess--set up the book cart and have the music playing.
Look at having a couple of coffee pots and since they pull so much electricity make sure you don't blow a fuse.
Set everything up the night before (of course leave the donuts in their boxes.
Lots of seating--and have a plan for where backpacks should go and how you are going to dismiss everyone after the event.
Have a parking plan. Our DwD and MwM routinely draw over 450 folks. They can be huge.
At the end we sell off any left over donuts at cost and there you go...instant fun!
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We had a program called Cookies and Cocoa, but we are working on changing the name to be more health concious since they don't really eat cookies. I like the donuts with dad and muffins with mom, but we aim to get both parents and younger siblings to come. I need name ideas for this program to have both parents involved.

I know this is just the beginning of the year, but being a new PTA president this, I am looking for new ideas. A lot of which I already received thanks to you. What I am trying to figure out is when it is time to plan a fifth grade graduation ceremony, what has anyone done in the past?

We did our first Donuts with Dad this past June and it had over 300 people come. We allow any child with any male, infact we did have a couple of females as well.
We do it just as a social event from 7:30-8:30 and we did do a RSVP since it was our first year but I think we will continue with that as well. It is an easy event that sends a message to that male involvement, we actually had our vp in charge of it and HE gave a little talk about getting involved!