We have insurance through PTO today. At our end of the year field day/carnival we would love to have a dunk tank and/or fun house portable obstacle with crawl tunnel, cargo net to climb and fun house mirrors. Our district had us speak with the legal advisor who took a look at the companies' customer contract and they will not agree to us having this due to legal ramifications. Would we be covered through PTO today?

One of the best, new things we did this year was set up an art station tent. We had two different activities to offer; picture painting and jewelry making. We purchased special art paper and large gallon buckets of paint and various paint brushes to allow anyone to paint a picture. Once they were done painting, we hung the pictures up to dry while the children enjoyed the carnival. Secondly, we purchased large boxes of mixed beads for bracelets, we set out bowls of beads on each table as well as pre-cut jewelry cords for both bracelets and necklaces.

Our art station was set up with 6 or 8 tables and we used popups over the entire area. Then we hung clothesline around the sides and back of the area and used clothespins to hang the art work. We purchased all of our art supply through the company our school's art teacher uses for her supplies. I think we spent about $300 and we paid for that with grant money we received from our city's art council. We had enough supplies left over to not only be ready for next year, but also to donate to the art department at our school. It was great and people of all ages came to visit this area!

I have all of my carnival games and prizes set but I am wanting to do an art activity of some sort. My theme is 'here comes summer' I had thought about having the kids decorate towels, to possibly use during summer but I couldn't find any for a decent price (the ones I found were around $2+ each! and we had over 300 kids attend carnival last year). I thought about doing a plant but most of the families at my school live in apartments so I don't think the plants would last long (i.e. not replant-able anywhere, I am one of the apartment people and plants don't even appeal to me.) So my question is does anyone have an useful arts and craft project that is summery? We did t-shirts last year so I don't want to repeat. Thank you for any ideas

We are a K-4 school of about 750 students and have an annual spring carnival very similar to what Trisa described so well. In conjunction with the carnival we also have a silent auction and class basket auction which boosts our carnival profits to around $25,000.

Each class basket conforms to a theme such as "Lego", "Star Wars", "Pampered Pooch", "Family Game Night" or "Sleepover Kit". Donations are made from families in each class and a basket is coordinated by a classroom basket coordinator. All of the baskets are displayed in the library during the carnival and are bid on in a silent auction format.

We also have a silent auction during the carnival that consists of donations made by local and corporate vendors, local high schools donate spirit wear and camp registrations, and staff donate their time by allowing students to win the opportunity to be "principal for a day", "librarian for a day", "PE teacher for a day", etc. We also auction off framed pictures of each class with each student's signature on the matte. Bids are accepted throughout the carnival and bidding ends 1hour before the end of the carnival so that parents have time to pay for their purchases and take home their bounty that night.

These have been a super addition to our carnival that have boosted our profits a great deal!