Need ideas for school carnival

[Nickymouse]

We have a carnival fundraiser every year at our kids school. I'm just looking for some new game ideas so that we don't have the same old games every year. We do the usual things like the Lollypop Tree, Football toss, etc. but I'd like to construct a few new ones if they're not too hard to make. Any ideas would be appreciated.

 

[mudnuri]

at our pto carnival, we do the following games (im trying to remember them all!)

Ring Toss
Tatoo's
mini golf- one of the parents constructed this with 2x4's and plywood, and then indoor/outdoor turf.

ducks in a small pond, with PRIZE written on bottom of ducks

fishing- A board is stood up, like an ocean, child stands facing it, hangs string behind board, someone on back side hooks a prize to the fishing hook (paperclip)

bowling

balls into buckets

sponge toss- we usually have the principal behind the board with her face sticking through... This one we charge 25 cents per sponge

face painting

We charge $1.50 to get in, and theres enough tickets for 1.50 to do every spot. Theres a lot more I cant think of right now, but it's almost planning time so I'll let you know the rest.

We also sell either Pizza/chips/drink or Dog/chips/drink for 1.50 child 2.50 adult. The carnival is held outdoors unless theres rain, and it's normally from 5pm-7pm on a Friday night. We get the food donated from local places. The .25 for throwing the sponge at the teacher is put into the student activities account the pto has.

Last year we were raising 45K for a new playground, so all monies from carnival went to that.

Our PTO only does 1 fundraiser a year, in the fall, so carnival money is important to us, as we fund 95% of field trips and special events that the school has.

Hope this helps

Brandy

 

[dzneelvr]

The most popular games at our carnival were:

fishing game: get a small wading pool and put in construction paper fish with a magnet attached to each. The pole has a large paper clip that will attach to the fish when it is "hooked". Each fish has a number on it and the kid got tokens in that number (or whatever prize system you use).

Very easy to man--usually only took one adult.

Basketball shoot: 3 tries to make 1 basket. You can use a Little tykes hoop for the small frys. Ours was in a gym so we just used the regular hoop for the bigger students.

Cake Walk: Extremely popular. Each family donated a baked item and then they were auctioned off via the cake walk all night. Each try was 25cents. There is usually a line for this attraction.

Pick up pumpkins: a take off on pick up ducks. you have a tray with several small guoards that look like those mini pumpkins (we had ours in the fall) and each has a magic markered number on the bottom of it. Again, tokens given out in the amount of the number selected.

Have Fun!!

 

[Allie322]

Here are a couple that weren't mentioned by previous posters:
--Have children walk a small course with a Dixie cup filled with water balanced on their heads. The older the student, the longer and harder the walk is.
--Toss water balloons at a target. We hang hula hoops on the side of the building and each is worth different points.
--Sand Art. A notice is sent home asking parents to send in baby food jars with lids. (We are fortunate that there are also a couple of day care centers in the area who give us a ton of jars.) In large storage containers, we make our own sand by putting in salt and a large piece of sidewalk chalk, and shaking vigorously. On Fair Day, we have the children use Dixie cups to pour the colored salt into the jars and create their masterpieces. This is one of our most popular booths.

Have fun!

 

[clh2]

One thing our PTA does at every function is a raffle. We do these at our carnival, the annual spaghetti dinner, the open house and the spring dance.

They usually try to find a "hot" toy, that the kids are really interested in, and raffle it off. Some years, there are "boy stuff" and "girl stuff." Some years the items are a little more unisex, i.e. a scooter.

We missed the halloween carinval this year, wince it conflicted with a family vacation. In our neck of the woods, there is a "carnival games" type of company. The company provides the games and the prizes. The PTA had to help with the set up, and staffing the games. The PTA had to guarantee a minimum fee of $300 to the games company. The kids would win tokens at the game, and would redeem them at the prize table. We were charged for the prizes that were redeemed. We've made money on this each time we did this.

And, since I am assuming that the point of this function is to raise funds, I might throw in my favorite...The American Doll company will make a 1-time donation to a non-profit organization of a doll. If you call their 800 number, the custumer service reps will give you the number of the person that needs to be called. A letter needs to be written to them, and then they will decide who will get a doll or not. We had no problems getting one. (IMNSHO, my thought on this was - that is fine if we wouldn't get a doll on our first attempt - because we would keep trying until we got one!

The doll was used a prize for a raffle at one of our spring dances.

 

[Nickymouse]

Wow! Thanks for all the fast responses. I'm going to copy this thread and bring it to our planning meeting next week.

 

[eeyoreforever]

Originally posted by clh2

...The American Doll company will make a 1-time donation to a non-profit organization of a doll.

I saw this suggestion posted before and our school tried to get one. This is a copy of the letter they e-mailed back. We applied several months ago and as of yet have not heard anything.

Here is the letter:
Thank you for your interest in American Girl. for your fundraising
efforts. Due to the very large number of donation requests we receive,
we have instituted formal procedures and guidelines in order to impact
as many children as possible through our donations. We focus our
charitable efforts on non-profit organizations that are raising money to
benefit groups of children, whose ages range specifically from birth to
12 years of age.

In order to be considered for receipt of a product donation for a raffle
or auction, a completed Application Form must be received at least six
weeks prior to the event. To begin the process, please submit your
request for the Application Form on organizational letterhead to:

Charitable Contributions Committee
American Girl
8400 Fairway Place
Middleton, WI 53562

FAX: 1-608-828-4780

 

[Kallison]

I've done two big raffles for our school that made several thousand dollars by calling local merchants and getting them to donate items. We then sold tickets and did a drawing for each one at the end of the night. It is a lot of work though, you have to recognize each contributor. You can ask families from school to donate items too, a weekend at their vacation house, any new stuff from Christmas they don't want, books, etc. I used to work at Princeton so I was always good at getting signed books by the author.

Another idea we did was have each homeroom make a themed basket and then they sold tickets for those. Just get a laundry basket and one would be movie - so they would send in candy, popcorn, soda, movie tickets. Another one might be all books. Another was ice cream sundaes with dishes and fixings. You get the idea. Each kid would send in an item that might cost $2 or $3 but put them all together and it made a nice prize. Then we would wrap them up in cellophane with a big bow.

Looking at your games we always did a nail painting booth. Even for the boys, we would paint them blue, green, black and call them monster nails.

 

[CajunDixie]

We too do the raffle, but approach it differently. We send out letters and then do follow ups with local businesses asking for donated prizes. For example the garden center donates a hanging basket. At the time of the drawing we'll announce the basket was donated by Yada Company and thank them then pull out a winning ticket. We live in a small town (2 stoplights) and collected about 100 items. A few we combined like movie rental with a case of pop from the liquour store. Or zoo passes with free sandwhich coupons from Arby's. We hold the raffle in the cafeteria so that kids can go play games in the gym and parents can relax while we draw tickets out. We then tape the winning tickets to a long sheet of paper that we have wrote the prize numbers on....need not be present to win. Any prizes not picked up that night we will try contacting the winner twice. On the last day of school we disburse the unclaimed prizes to helpers and teachers. Tickets sell for $.50.

And when doing your games dont forget the "T" in PTO stands for teachers. Our school has one game per teacher set up in the gym. With the exception of Kindergarten....they are combined to do the cakewalk. Its the teacher's job to either set up the game after school or to find parent volunteers to do it. Usually the PTO finds parents to work each game but sometimes we ask the teachers to send letters home asking for parents to sign up for a shift.

For food its not our goal to make money on this. We offer a hotdog, chip and pop for $1.00.

 

[letfuller]

My Speech group provides balloons for one ticket (25 cents). We fill them with helium and they were a hit last year!!!!

 

[Breezy_Carol]

We did one game similar to the football toss but it was throwing a roll of toilet paper through a toilet seat.

Another big hit was an engraving booth. We bought lots of the inexpensive necklaces with charms like hearts or footballs, etc from Oriental Trading Company then manned the booth with several adults with the engravers you use at home to mark things. Kids could have the charm engraved with what they wanted. The first year we tried this, we sold out early.

 

[Pop Daddy]

remember them Ronald Mcdonald ones, did anyone ever do them

 

[jwsqrdplus2]

We have also done the sand art. It is usually a big hit also. And our school has a daycare facility attached to it, so baby food jars are VERY easy to come by!

We also do a white elephant. We ask families to donate wrapped, labeled (young boy, teen girl, adult male, etc) gifts worth at least $1, then for 4 tickets ($1) people can pick a gift. This is a big hit with the pre-teen/teen age girls. Especially if you are smart and stock up on lip glosses and nail polishes in funky colors for them!

Another idea is digging for gold. We use a sand table and bury lots of pennies and one dubloon (it's New Orleans!). Then using a litter box scooper, the contestants scoop out one scoopful of sand. Pennies get small prizes; the dubloon gets a big prize. I think that one was 2 tickets (50 cents) per scoop. Little kids like that one.

 

[cascadecupcake]

Yes, the cake walk is always the busiest game at our carnival. Except we don't have all that many cakes. We do 2-Liters of pop and full bags of candy. People donate the stuff so it's great.

Next I think would be face and hair painting. The boys get spiders and lizards put on their faces and the girls get their hair striped.

The toilet paper with the toilet seat is hilarious!

 

[Nickymouse]

Love these ideas!

 

[Danauk]

At the school where I work we did a fundraiser at our school carnival where the kids had to vote for which teacher they would like to see gunged!! All the teachers agreed to this at the start (myself included!!) and the teacher with the most votes had to sit on a chair whilst the kids payed a small ammount to throw a cup of gunge (tomato juice) at the teacher!! Thank goodness I didn't win!
I'm not sure your teachers will be up for this (we are a bit crazy at my school!) but it was good fun!

We also had other stalls like a cake stall and a beat the goalie (one teacher was in a football (soccer) goal and the kids had to try to score a goal past him.)

 

[KimRaye]

Don't think I read this when skimming thru.... See if someone has one of those golf putting practice things... (they shoot the ball back when you get it in). My DD just loved this at her school's fair.

There was also a small pet's cage, filled with prizes. There was a bucket filled with numerous keys. If you picked the right key to open the lock, you picked a prize from inside.

Small type crafts might also be good.