Everyone has great ideas! Our Physical Education department sets up 50 stations in the first half of the day and a class competition in the second half of the day. We have 2 days for class levels: PK-2 one day and 3-5 the other. The PTO provides freeze pops as a station and the children have to visit 15-20 stations to get a freeze pop. Parents are huge in these events! They bring their lawn chairs and have fun encouraging and helping these students. The tug of war gets intense! I lost my voice the first field day cheering on my daughter's class.
Can anyone tell me more about the bar-b-q arena? I think that would be a great way to bring more people out.
Field Day is a day of fun events, promoting sportsmanship, spirit and cooperation. This event is usually held in the school field, hence Field Day. The common events are various relays, such as 3 legged race, sponge relay, potato sack, etc. In addition, you'll often see various target type games, or tug-o-war, etc. Sometimes a BBQ might be part of the day as well.
This event is almost always during a school day and is usually towards the end of the school year.
Can someone please explain what exactly is Field Day? We are a new PTO of 700 student elementary school (Pre-K to 5th). It sounds like a fun day. Do you hold this as a celebration to wrap up the end of the school year? Is this done during school hours or on a Saturday?
Our event is called "Fun Day" but we do the same games. In addition, our PTO sponsors lunch for the kids, teachers and volunteers and we rent an inflatable. This year we got a good price and will be renting 3 of them. Will also do popcorn (we have a machine), tatoos and face painting.
We had our field day today! We had 65 parent volunteers and ~50 local high school athlete volunteers! The high school seniors are basically done for the year, just waiting for graduation day to come. We contacted the athletic department quite a few weeks ago and the volunteering steamrolled into an amazing turnout! The students were thrilled that the "big high schoolers" were there for the day! Some voluteers came for the morning session, others for the afternoon and many stayed for the entire day. Those that stayed for the day were fed a pizza lunch with PTA funds.
Our field day is coordinated by the staff, with $400/year in PTA funds supporting it. Plus, we (the PTA) help get the word out months ahead of time about the need for volunteers for this day.
Just to toot our horns a bit...we had a huge event yesterday that brought in an additional 91 parent volunteers from 9:00-2:30! We begin advertizing these events at least four months ahead of time asking people to save the dates as the events are so big they can't happen without the help of parents. Our school has 700 students in 1st-5th grades. The school is 30+years old with 30% low income and we have ~100 students choiced out each year because we are commonly refered to as the 'getto school'. Believe it or not, 30% is the highest in the district so we are considered the poor school. What we may be lacking in income we more than overcome in involvement! I couldn't be more proud to be a parent of this school. The dedication of the staff and parents is overwhelming. To have over 200 volunteers converge on our school in two days has brought tears to my eyes and the entire staff. New parents have commented on how impressed and amazed they are at the shear number of parents who are involved. Little do they know that a year ago this wasn't the case. We turned things around this year by getting more information out through newsletters and email. We didn't beg for volunteers, we asked people to join in the fun and made it sound like everyone else was involved and they sure didn't want to miss out. OMG it worked!
