Family Fun Night Ideas?

[mrsboz]

My friend and I are going to be heading up the Family Fun Night for next year at our children's school. does anyone have any ideas for such a night? We want to do something different. We would love to do something that no one has ever done before. They usually do a movie night or some sort of magician or dance. Any ideas? Thanks for your time.

 

[challada]

If you go to ptotoday 's website, they have kits you can order for Family Fun Nights such as a Games one, a Movie night one, a Craft one....we've gotten them all.

That said, our PTA has also hosted some GREAT ones that were NOT from kits over the last couple of years:

1. Earth Night....in April we do one that is about the environment and have multiple stations from making a reusable grocery bag to finding worms in the compost!

2. Read-In Night...we invited folks to bring a book to trade and then had a bookmaking area, a few literacy games and an area where adults read to a group of kids.

3. Around the World Night...we made passports (like Epcot) and had families from different countries at different stations to present something about their country. Now, we live in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere washington and were able to find folks to do Mexico, Japan, China, Korea, Canada, Poland and the US...you can probably find more in a town of more people.

4. Sports Night...we played sports in the gym in the dead of winter. We are wanting to do it as a swap equipment night next time around!

 

[mommytotwo]

Snack stations-have each group put out a simple snack to make.
Have the first station be a brown bag decorating station. Have each child write their name on the bag and decorate it. Before leaving the station, give them 3-4 snack bags to put their snacks that they made in.
You could have the kids make popcorn balls, individual english pizza muffins, fruit and dip.....
This will also take care of most of the refreshments for the evening.

 

[Nicolepa]

Our school does a bingo night. It is a HUGE hit. They have parents donate items (anything for $1 up) for the prizes. This even it packed every year and the kids have a blast (ok the grownups do too). They let several people win each round.

 

[mrsboz]

Thank you all for your suggestions. My friend and I love the Bingo idea.
Nicolepa: Do you charge to get in? Do you have refreshments? Do you make up the cards yourself? Do you have the children sit on the floor or at tables? We were wondering because if we have it in the gym we probably won't have enough tables. Do you make money at this event or is it just for fun?

 

[Snow Brite]

Last year they had a really cute one that was a carnival on the school field. It was a ticket per game and the tickets were $1 each. If you volunteered to run a booth for an hour you were "paid" with 10 tickets. So most parents would run a booth for an hour, then go play for the rest of the time. It was not a huge money maker, but it was lots of fun. They also gave out 10 tickets to each of the kids on the school lunch program, so that everyone could come.

There were the usual carnival games, like making a basketball score, knocking down the milk bottles, beanbag toss, etc, etc. There were also a few I had not seen before such as a hoola hoop game. There were quite a few donated little prizes if you won, but the kids really weren't into that part of it. There were also hot dogs, corn dogs, lemonade, hamburgers, popcorn and cotton candy for sale (I think this is where most of the money came from).

Then for the last hour there was a family dance on the basketball court. Everyone danced under the stars and the rule was one kid song for every adult song.

It was not that expensive to put together, except for renting the popcorn, cotton candy and buying the food stuff. Most of the games were things that some of the handy moms and dads built and were things that could be used again. There were a lot of red and yellow balloons and streamers around and they did splurge and get a big balloon arch to lead into the area.

It was cute, fun, very enjoyable family evening and I think they made a little bit of money. Can't beat THAT with a stick!

 

[mrsboz]

Snowbrite, thank you for your idea. They have an event that is very similar to this at the end of the year. It is field day. Thank you. It is a great idea!

 

[Nicolepa]

Thank you all for your suggestions. My friend and I love the Bingo idea.
Nicolepa: Do you charge to get in? Do you have refreshments? Do you make up the cards yourself? Do you have the children sit on the floor or at tables? We were wondering because if we have it in the gym we probably won't have enough tables. Do you make money at this event or is it just for fun?

We charged $3 per person or $10 per family. One of the grades did pizza & drinks for a fundraiser. It was like $2 a slice $10 for a whole pizza. The pizza's were donated by Papa Johns.

I think the cards were ordered from Oriental Trading (although I don't see them there right now). They were paper, and you just marked it w/a crayon and when done got a new one. Each person was allowed 2 cards per round. They set up the lunch tables and we all squeezed on them. There's no reason you couldn't do the floor.

Like I said all the prizes were donated so there was no cost there.

They also had a gift basket raffel. They had a game night basket, candle basket, PS2 Basket etc. I don't buy any tickets for the raffel so I don't remember how much it was.

 

[goofy's friends]

We did the bingo idea too. Very big hit. There were a few tables , but most of the kids sat on the floor. We used the cards where they could use the blotters and charged .50 a card and they could have as many as they wanted. There were a few big prizes, but mostly candy. they sold pizza too for $2.50 slice and that was where a lot of the $$$ came from. Drinks and Ice cream bars were also available to buy.

This is done on auction night. We (silent) auction off a basket from each classroom and this is a great money maker, but a pain for the homeroom moms to put together. We do live auction at the end of the evening for the big items.