Book Fair Ideas?!

[HLAuburn]

Looking for ideas to promote a school book fair for a K-7 school. We want to do a contest/giveaway the week leading up to the fair to get the kids and teachers excited.

The prizes will be gift certificates for the book fair - one student per class. It was suggested to do some sort of contest, like design a book mark, but personally I think that's WAY too complicated (takes up class time, someone has to judge etc) and it would be easier to do something "arbitrary" like a drawing.

Has anyone organized a book fair and has some ideas they could share for good ways to get the school excited and promote the fair and/or for giveaways?!

Thanks!!

 

[Bearvet]

I'm the librarian at our elementary school and I run the book fair, so I may be able to do more with the kids than the PTO. Two weeks before the fair I play bingo with them (I made the bingo cards based on library/book words) and play until every student wins. The prizes are $1 coupons to use at the fair. The week before the fair, I show the author DVD sent by Scholastic and the kids get very excited. I promote the classroom wish lists as a great holiday gift idea for your child's teacher, etc. I also send home the colorful fliers provided by Scholastic, put up the posters and offer online shopping. We are a small school - PreK - 6 with 150 students and my sales are usually decent. Good luck!

 

[Malibustyle23]

Our book fair just ended last week. Our media specialist (librarian) does contests to win a book at a value of $4.99 or less. Generally they are guessing games. A jar full of gumballs where you guess how many are in there. A stack of books where you guess how many pages are in the entire stack, etc, etc.

Our book fairs also coincide with another big event that week to get more traffic in there. Grandparents day where the grandparents are welcomed into the school to visit classes for the day. Spaghetti dinner night which is sponsored by the PTA and each PTA member can attend for free. PJ story night is also another event in the evening during book fair.

 

[CrazyCakeLady]

I chaired several Scholastic Book Fairs over the years. We ran two two promotions every year:

1. Reading Contest- About a month or so before the Book Fair, contest forms would get sent home from school. If I remember correctly, the "contest" was for each kid to read either 3 picture books or 2 chapter books. Every kid who turned a form in would get a small trinket at the Book Fair (pencil, bookmark or eraser). One form from each homeroom would get pulled and that kid would receive a $5 Gift Certificate to spend at the Book Fair. We found that teachers really encouraged kids to fill out the forms and most kids participated and read above the minimum 2 or 3 books.

2. Guessing Game- During our Family Night, we would have a jar filled with an item based on that year's theme. Swedish Fish for "Under the Sea", animal crackers for "Book Fair Safari", gum balls for "Reading Diner"... you get the picture. The kid whose guess was the closest to the actual number in the jar would have their name announced during morning announcements the next day, they would receive the jar and a $25 gift certificate.

This was at a public K-5 with a fairly large student body and an enormous amount of parental support. We made a ridiculous amount of money so we were well able to do giveaways, fulfill teacher wish lists, and provide books to students who were not financially able to purchase them.

 

[HLAuburn]

Thank you all for the great suggestions!

 

[Boston Tea Party]

Scholastic has Fair Files with ideas in their book fair toolkit. Might be some ideas in there. Also, if you have gotten your tool kit delivered, there is a folder in there with ideas as well.