The PTA will provide a map of contest entries so families can drive by and enjoy the creations. One scarecrow will be chosen for a special prize. Tips for creative scarecrow contests: Encourage families to make scarecrows from found objects. If purchased scarecrows are acceptable, check with local craft stores for discounts. Nov 19, 2019 - CHRISTMAS TOY DRIVE FUNDRAISER EVENT FLYER This printable 'holiday toy drive' flyer is yours to keep forever to use year after year! A great value for your school, church, PTO PTA Organization, community fundraising events and more! PTO/PTA Fundraisers, Vendors, and Resources has 2,184 members. PTO/PTA Fundraisers, Vendors, and Resources is a group to share with and learn from a community of PTO/PTA volunteers and vendors. Find and connect with vendors, both local and national, offering fundraising and educational products/services for PTO/PTAs.
Editor’s note: Since we published this article in 2009, it's consistently been one of our most popular during the holidays. We’ve left the original ideas since many can be adapted to work with local COVID-19 guidelines, and added some new virtual holiday ideas, too.
Adapting Events for 2020
Virtual holiday party: Encourage families to get festive and make themselves a nice snack or festive beverage and “meet” at a certain time. You can set an organizer to lead some simple, kid-friendly games or holiday songs.
Kid holiday dress-up: Lots of groups had virtual Halloween events this year by having kids dress up and show off their costumes. You can do something similar during the holidays by having them break out their Santa hats, reindeer antlers, and other holiday props.
Virtual holiday scavenger hunt: This involves some sleuthing and movement. Parents can facilitate a videochat where kids are asked to find holiday-ish items in their homes (a red decoration, something silver, etc.); the first person to bring it back to the camera wins.
Virtual gingerbread-building: Have families purchase DIY gingerbread house kits (or if your budget allows, provide them). Set a time to have families build “together” virtually. You can even set a few judges to pick some fun “winners” like messiest, yuckiest, etc.
Online holiday bingo: Search for online bingo templates. Decide whether you want to do classic bingo where the organizer calls out squares or another variation, like picture bingo. Send it to families and set a day and time to meet and play virtually.
Community gift boxes: This follows the idea of “giving trees” often displayed at schools during normal years—and are needed more than ever in many communities. Work with the school and community organizations to match families in need with those who are able to give gift boxes of requested items. When the boxes are ready, enlist volunteers to wrap and deliver them.
As a distanced alternative, once you have a charity selected to work with, ask if they have their wish list online.
Socially distanced Santa: Several schools and parent groups have suggested safer alternatives to the traditional setup of having kids sit with Santa for photos.
“This year, we’ll have a Santa with a special face shield/mask that is built in to his beard. Instead of sitting on his lap, each kid will have a turn to sit across from him at a holiday decorated table for a short visit and with good angles, we're taking photos to appear as if they're sitting beside each other,” says Brooke Marriott, PTO treasurer at Kelly Elementary in Benton, Mo.
“I have seen a Santa behind a piece of plexiglass and then gift boxes in front of it for kids to sit on so it makes them look like they are sitting on his lap,” says Robin Woodmansee, PTO president at Richmond Elementary School in R.I.
Holiday drive-by: Following the success of a Halloween drive-by in the fall, leaders at Pine Dragons PTO in Pine City, Minn., have planned a holiday time follow-up. “Parents [will] line up on the one way which is decorated with inflatables, lights, elves, reindeer, and myself as the Grinch,” says Missy Lynne Milliman, PTO president. “We’ll hand out goody bags to each child which include tattoos, stickers, cocoa, candy canes, Hershey kisses, movie tickets to our local theater, free bowling coupon, and popcorn. We are [also] selling $1 raffle tickets for a family movie bundle valued at $60.”
They’ve also added in a giving element: “Children are invited to draw and/or color a card for someone living in one of our local nursing homes.”
Teacher Giving Tree
A giving tree solves the annual teacher gift dilemma for parents while helping teachers stock their classrooms with supplies they need. Put a real or artificial tree in the lobby of your school, or make one out of construction paper and post it on a wall. Cut colored construction paper into the shape of ornaments, thread with ribbon, and distribute them to teachers. Invite teachers to write their names on the ornaments along with an item they’d like donated to their classroom (for example, “Mrs. Maloney, hand sanitizer” or “Mr. Pierce, washable markers”). Teachers hang the ornaments on the tree. Parents who are looking for that perfect gift for their child’s teacher simply have to pick an ornament from the tree and return it with the requested item.
Multicultural Holiday Celebration
Invite families to share their holiday traditions with one another at a multicultural holiday celebration. Book your school gym or cafeteria and set up stations where children can learn about their classmates’ traditions and sample traditional holiday foods from other parts of the world.
Pictures With...
Recruit a parent to don a Santa Claus costume or dress up as Frosty the Snowman. Invite parents to bring their children to pose with your costumed character. Parents can bring their own cameras, or if your PTO has access to a photo printer, you can provide photos on the spot. This is a great service to offer as part of a larger event, such as a community tree-lighting or holiday bazaar.
Cookie Decorating
Invite kids to unleash their creativity on sugar cookies, and send them home with their tasty creations. Recruit volunteers to bake batches of cookies in assorted shapes and bring them to your school cafeteria on the designated day. Set out the cookies with a variety of decorating materials, such as colored frosting and candies. Give the children tiny paintbrushes to apply the frosting.
Holiday Toy Drive or Food Drive
Use your group’s organizing power to help others this holiday season. Contact your local food pantry, homeless shelter, or a national organization such as Toys for Tots to find out what they need and how your community can help. Get the word out to parents and place a bin in your school lobby for donations. Get together a large group to deliver the items.
Holiday Open Mic Night
Call it a talent show, a mini American Idol, or simply an opportunity for kids (and maybe their parents) to display their unique gifts. Set a date for your Holiday Open Mic Night, put out the call for holiday-theme acts, and see what you get. Maybe an a cappella rendition of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”? A Rockettes-style holiday dance performance? A scene from A Christmas Carol? The surprise is half the fun. And who knows—this could become a holiday tradition.
Winter Story Time
What’s more cozy than snuggling under a blanket in your pajamas and listening to a story? Invite parents and children to your school library for pajama story time. Encourage people to bring blankets or sleeping bags. Your group might hire a storyteller or ask a volunteer (your school principal, maybe?) to read a holiday- or winter-theme book.
Gingerbread Houses
This activity takes a bit of prep work, but it’s so popular with children that it’s worth it. Get a head count of the number of participants, then gather a group of volunteers for a pre-event “construction” party to assemble the houses. Keep it simple by using graham crackers instead of gingerbread. On the day of the event, each child decorates his own gingerbread house with candy canes, gumdrops, peppermints, and other varieties of candy. Take lots of pictures to post on your parent group’s website or newsletter!
Winter Movie
Help your school community get into the holiday spirit with a showing of a classic holiday or winter movie. Invite families to bring blankets or sleeping bags. Set up a refreshment stand with hot cocoa and marshmallows.
Parents’ Day Off
Organize a “drop-off” event to give parents an afternoon to shop for gifts without kids in tow. Recruit plenty of volunteers—middle school and high school students are ideal—and take over the school gymnasium on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Organize party games, put out craft materials, prepare an area where kids can kick back and watch a video. When parents return for their kids with their shopping complete, they’ll thank you. Guaranteed.
Support Our Troops—and Their Families
Are there military families within your school community? If so, work with them to find out how your group can brighten their holidays and those of deployed service members. Collect items and assemble care packages for soldiers, or have students make cards to send. Organize volunteers to support families with a deployed parent: String their holiday lights, provide childcare while they shop for gifts, or schedule an “on call” list of drivers willing to transport their children to and from activities.
Make It and Take It
What parent wouldn’t treasure a gift lovingly crafted by their child’s hands? Your group can help bring a smile to parents’ faces and show their feelings of pride in their children by hosting a “make it and take it” craft event. Book the school cafeteria for a few hours on a weekend. Choose a craft that kids can make and take home that day. You might even put out supplies for kids to make their own wrapping paper using newsprint or butcher paper and markers, crayons, and stickers. By the end of the day, each child will go home with a gift, wrapped and ready for their mom or dad.
Elizabeth S. Leaver contributed to this article.
Originally posted in 2009 and updated regularly.
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The past number of months have seen plenty of disruptions, and that includes the PTO events usually held each fall. When whispers about Halloween 2020 getting canceled began circulating this summer, some parent group leaders in our PTO and PTA Leaders & Volunteers Facebook group decided to give their fall festival and trunk or treat events some socially distant and virtual twists rather than cancelling them.
Drive-Through Spookiness
Contributors in the Facebook group say they‘re reconfiguring their haunted houses and trunk or treat nights, turning their traditional walk-through Halloween events into socially distanced drive-through versions.
Leah Pisano had no problem coming up with ideas that follow her Beaver Falls, Penn., district’s social distance guidelines for her parent group’s fall event.
“I envisioned a contactless ‘Boo Thru’ with lots of trunks decorated with different themes, a section with a DJ and dancing witches and skeletons (line dances, popular TikTok dances), lighted archways, lots of props and haunted scenes, carved pumpkins, and decorated bales of hay,” says the vice president of the Blackhawk Intermediate PTO. “One big bag will be given to each child at the end that is full of treats and giveaways, handed by a volunteer wearing PPE.”
Another drive-through idea is to hold a “parade or treat” event. During a parade or treat, parent group members and teachers decorate their vehicles in a theme and drive past students’ houses, tossing candy or other treats to kids in their yards. You could invite families to vote on their favorite 'car costume' or recruit a panel of judges from the community to choose winners.
Like the graduation and teacher appreciation parades last spring, these are easier for schools in smaller geographic areas to pull off in a shorter time frame.
The size of a drive-through trunk or treat or haunted house event depend on budget, the number of volunteers who would hand out candy and keep traffic moving, and the amount of space needed for parked cars and a drive-through lane.
Tips for pulling off a drive-through event:
Have parents sign up for time slots to keep the line under control and prevent traffic jams.
Rent or borrow tents, which will protect costumed volunteers, props, and decorations from the elements (you can also see if any party rental companies would donate them).
Shop for decorations in October, when fabric and craft stores begin marking down prices a few weeks before Halloween.
Minimize handling of food or candy given to students by making treat bags or handing out prepackaged snacks decorated as mummies, ghosts, or jack-o'-lanterns.
Virtual Costume Contests
Part of the fun of fall events is seeing the kids in their costumes, whether they’re wearing Halloween or favorite character outfits. That can still happen with some creative planning.
Many leaders are planning to set up fall-theme display areas at their events and have costumed kids come up one at a time to have their photos taken. Leaders will share the pictures on their group’s social media channels for everyone to see and vote on.
For groups that can’t hold events due to district restrictions, contests can still happen. Ask parents of at-home learners to share photos of their child’s costume on social channels, or hold a Zoom or Google Meet costume contest where students dress to impress. Add some kid-friendly music and encourage kids to show off their dance moves to turn the event into a virtual dance party and costume contest.
Tips for pulling off a costume contest:
Set rules about acceptable costumes well ahead of your event. Clearly say what is and isn’t allowed.
Decide who will vote. Some groups choose a committee of teachers to vote, while others let the entire school community choose winners.
Decide how they’ll vote. The teachers may vote behind the scenes and announce the winner later that night or the next morning. Group votes could be a show of hands on a Zoom call or via a Facebook poll by a certain deadline.
Face Mask Decorating
For a fun twist on costumes, hold a face mask decorating contest this year. Award prizes to “most creative,” “spookiest,” “funniest,” “most imaginative,” and more.
Tips to decorating face masks:
Set guidelines to keep the decorations like sequins, feathers, or foam shapes from interfering with breathability and the effectiveness of the face mask itself.
Set rules for acceptable and unacceptable decorations or themes.
Decide who will vote on winners and how they’ll vote (see virtual costume contests tips above).
Scarecrow Decorating Contest
When Yorktown (Va.) Elementary Magnet School PTA president Ashley Smith and treasurer Shannon Taber had to postpone their Monster Mash Dance this fall, they instead came up with a scarecrow decorating contest. Students will create and decorate their scarecrow and display it in their front yard for one week. The PTA will provide a map of contest entries so families can drive by and enjoy the creations. One scarecrow will be chosen for a special prize.
Tips for creative scarecrow contests:
Encourage families to make scarecrows from found objects. If purchased scarecrows are acceptable, check with local craft stores for discounts.
Create social media buzz and post a “scarecrow of the day.”
Consider giving prizes to winners in each grade.
Pumpkin Painting and Decorating
A mainstay of fall festivals everywhere, pumpkin decorating is getting an update this year, too. While kids still paint their favorite book character or jack-o’-lantern designs onto real or foam gourds, this year’s events will most likely take place on virtual platforms.
Parents submit photos, and either a committee votes for winners or all school families can vote online via Facebook poll or Instagram comments for example.
Tips for perfect pumpkin decorating events:
Make sure the videoconference platform you’re using offers a package large enough to let your entire student population participate. For example, many platforms limit attendees to 300 people.
Partner with a local pumpkin patch to get free or discounted real gourds, or bulk order foam pumpkins from a discount distributor.
Distribute real or foam pumpkins to parents at a set drive-through time.
Share Halloween craft and game ideas with families and encourage them to try out a few—like Halloween bingo or a slime-filled jack-o'-lantern—while waiting for judges to choose the winning pumpkin carvers.
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Not-so-Spooky Story Night
The Kennydale Elementary PTA in Renton, Wash., planned a virtual version of its popular fall reading event. In past years, the group partnered with the school librarian to find Halloween-theme poetry for students to read in front of an audience. Student readers wore their costumes and performed their poems, and then went trick-or-treating at family-sponsored tables set up around the school gym and common area.
For this year’s virtual version, president Bethany Potter says the PTA will ask participating kids “to record themselves reading a poem or short story and submitting it for review by a team of parents for ‘appropriate messaging’ of their performance. We will have three ‘acts’ of the presentation of the recorded shorts and then balance it out with a volunteer or teacher reading a story or leading them in a song. There will also be a song and dance where we will turn on cameras of those students who want to share their costumes with the group.”
As for the trick-or-treating portion at the end, committee cochairs Elayna Ferguson, past president and current secretary, and Michelle Rauschenberg, membership vice president, are considering a fun food craft like popcorn balls or cereal treats that are easy and inexpensive for families to make.
Tips for a virtual reading night:
Get input from your school librarian. She’ll know what’s age-appropriate and fits the season.
Consider using Zoom’s webinar tool for larger events to reduce participants coming on and off mute and causing distractions.
Ask the kids to practice reading their poems and stories a few times before recording themselves.
Fall Scavenger Hunts
The Coronado Elementary PTO in Gilbert, Ariz., is changing up its traditional fall festival and planning a Fall Questival, which is a scavenger hunt that families will do together in their cars.
Families will be divided into groups, and each group will have a race coordinator. The families will fill out a bingo-style card with photo submissions of specific landmarks and certain businesses around town. The school mascot will make surprise appearances at some locations, adding to the challenge.
When families complete the scavenger hunt card, they “win raffle tickets for a virtual raffle at the end of the night,” says Brooke Ewing, PTO president. “We’re just doing all we can to bring families together, those who chose to learn from home and those who are going back.”
Tips for fun scavenger hunts:
Include historical and meaningful locations around your town.
Keep costs low and send scavenger hunt cards out virtually. Ask families to submit their photos via social media or text messaging to enter the prize drawing.
Raffle prizes can include a gift basket filled with goods from local shops, gift cards to local restaurants or attractions, or school spiritwear.
Fall Flower Sale
The Eagle Elementary PTO held a fall flower sale to kick off its new school year colorfully. Teaming up with a local Selkirk, N.Y., nursery, the PTO presold tickets for a planter, hanging basket, and bushel basket-style planter of homegrown mums. Parents picked up the flowers at the nursery during a three-day period. The PTO paired the mum sale with a free back-to-school drive-in movie night for in-person students.
Tips for fall flower sales:
Source flowers from a nearby nursery and support a local small business.
Set up easy payment methods for parents of in-school and at-home learners.
Offer varying days and times for flower pickup to accommodate parent work schedules.
More Ideas From Readers
Hold a fall or Halloween yard decoration contest.
Ask a teacher to lead an online art or drawing lesson to help families create fall-related artworks.
Sponsor a Halloween-theme kids' bake-off, with kids baking at home and sharing photos of their creations.
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