Whether your school is gearing up for a spring carnival or looking ahead to fall, the School Carnival Guide will help your event to be a great success. This is a book authored by Jim Berigan, who for over a year wrote for the Top School Fundraisers blog. Now he’s on his own and focusing on helping schools fundraise with carnivals.
This guide contains many practical tips on how to make your next carnival a success. Jim provides advice based on his own experience and from those of other school volunteers like you. Besides just planning the carnival, the book helps you reach the goal of making the carnival a great school fundraiser.
I’ve partnered with Jim to offer this book at a special price, just for a limited time. From now until February 28th, 2010 you can get his book for HALF PRICE!
The regular price is $20, which is totally worth it, but now you can get it for just $10 when you use the code FEB2010SALE at checkout.
Over the past four years the Lowe’s Toolbox for Education program has provided more than $17 million to almost 4,000 schools across the country. They don’t just choose a few schools either. Lowe’s will provide grants to public schools and public school parent teacher groups – at more than 1,000 different schools earch school year.
Lowe’s Charitable and Educational Foundation (LCEF) knows how hard you work for your kids and your community and we’re dedicated to helping your parent-teacher group achieve even more for your school. Apply for our Toolbox for Education Grant now and build on your already impressive parent group success with Lowe’s.
When planning a school Halloween carnival it’s important to include lots of fun games for the kids to play. Playing games, competitions and winning prizes make the event so much fun for the students.
Many times each grade or class will have their own game booth. The game idea that your group picks should be age appropriate. There are a wide variety of game ideas that are good for each age level.
There are some games that students will expect to see each year, such as the bean bag toss. Be sure to include the most popular games that your school carnival had last year. Students also like to find something new and different. So finding a few unique, fun Halloween carnival games will bring some new excitement to your event.
Traditional Games
Just about every carnival should include the traditional, tried and true games that everyone enjoys. Some of these are kids games and others can be for older siblings and adults.
Dunking Booth – Who can resist dunking their teacher, classmate or school principal. You just need to prepare for the logistics of hosting the booth, making sure it works properly and is safe. If you don’t want to build one, check with local rental companies.
Duck pond – This is great for toddlers to grade 1. Fill a galvanized tub with water and colorful plastic ducks. Each duck has a number on the bottom that corresponds to a prize with that same number. The child picks up a duck from the pond and the person working the booth awards the prize. Easy and fun for little ones.
Darts – You cannot have a carnival without the traditional balloon dart game!
High Tech Games
Why not incorporate technology into your Halloween carnival?
Wii games – Have a Wii set up to play one of the sports like bowling. Have a time limit!
Wii tournament – Even better have a Wii tournament. Each player signs up for a time slot ahead of time, paying an entry fee. Players come back to play one another in the tournament rounds to determine who the best player is.
Guitar Hero or Garage Band – These are other very popular games that kids enjoy.
Jeopardy – This long standing TV show is available as an interactive game. Classroom Jeopardy is customizable with your own questions or you can just use one of the Jeopardy software programs for your game system.
Big Event Games
Draw a crowd — plus media attention and publicity ahead of time — with an unusual game.
Super-sized board games – Take your regular, old fashioned board game and make it BIG. How about putting together lots of Twister sheets for the “world’s largest Twister game?” One group found success with a life size checkers game.
Sports tournaments – Hold a tournament at the same location of your school Halloween carnival. Great for teens who are “too old” for kiddie games and costumes. You could have several age brackets to make it fair. Start filling up the entry level brackets and times before the day of the carnival so people know when to be there.
Inflatables – There’s so much more to inflatables than just a simple bounce house! Now there are activities like obstacle courses, bungee competitions, and slides. Check with your local party rental place to see what’s available near you.
More Game Ideas
Here are several great websites that have more ideas to help you create fun carnival games:
Carnival Savers – Has a lot of ideas for Halloween carnivals – fast & easy games, build it yourself game booths, popular foods, petting zoos and other fun activities
These school Halloween game ideas should get you started on the right path. With some creativity you can probably come up with many other activities that your kids will love! Is there an unusual game that’s worked for your school in the past? Let us know in the comment box below:
School supplies– from pens to paper and curriculum materials–are essential to learning. With the economy and budget cuts it has been tough for many schools to provide the supplies needed. The Tools for Teaching contest sponsored by Catalogs.com and eNasco.com can help teachers face this challenge. Participants have the opportunity to win up to $2,500 in school supplies for their classrooms.
All you have to do is go to the website www.catalogs.com/teachers and answer the question: “Why does your class deserve to win a gift certificate from eNasco.com and how will you put the school supplies to good use?”
This contest runs through runs through Wednesday, September 30, 2009. Tell all the teachers you know to sign up for this contest. They could win some great materials to outfit the class for the school year!
The final honorable mention in the 2009 Top School Fundraisers Grant Award goes to Poinsettia Elementary School from Carlsbad, California. On behalf of the first through fifth graders, principal Steve Ahle submitted an excellent video requesting $2,000 for the purchase of new reading materials for their 500 students. This would include Leveled Readers sets for grades 1 and 2 and Newberry Award Winner novels for grades 3, 4 and 5.
The purchase of these materials will be used to help students go beyond reading at a basic level to achieve comprehension and application proficiency.
From the video, you will see that there is a strong commitment by the teachers and staff at Poinsettia to help children gain a life-long love of reading. There is also a thorough understanding that these early years are critical for a child. As Principal Ahle points out in the video, students who aren’t reading by the end of second grade are likely to be non-readers for their entire school careers.
Take a moment to watch their terrific video application, which is posted below. Thank you Poinsettia Elementary for sharing your needs with Top School Fundraisers. We wish you great success in achieving your very worthy goals!
This guide contains many practical tips on how to make your next carnival a success. Jim provides advice based on his own experience and from those of other school volunteers like you. Besides just planning the carnival, the book helps you reach the goal of making the carnival a great school fundraiser. 
When planning a school Halloween carnival it’s important to include lots of fun games for the kids to play. Playing games, competitions and winning prizes make the event so much fun for the students.
School supplies– from pens to paper and curriculum materials–are essential to learning. With the economy and budget cuts it has been tough for many schools to provide the supplies needed. The Tools for Teaching contest sponsored by Catalogs.com and eNasco.com can help teachers face this challenge. Participants have the opportunity to win up to $2,500 in school supplies for their classrooms.
