Elementary Holiday Shop....Calling all PTO members

[julyjewel]

If anyone of you have ever done a holiday/Santa shop at your school, please share it. Our school does one and they buy stuff from those junky companies with outrageous prices. They throw everything out on a table and it looks like a garage sale.

I have suggested to my PTO asking if Dollar stores or maybe craft shops would like to donate things. Also, I have suggested that we have people donate small crafts to cut costs. I have also recommended that the students help by each grade making something different. We are a small school of about 200 kids. One grade could make ornaments or whatever. I even suggested for the raffle items, that the classes get together and make treeskirts or class quilts to raffle off.

I am also going to be involved in designing the shop. I have told the Pto that appearance means everything and I am going to donate some old Christmas decorations and supply music to give it a nice holiday atmosphere.

Please share with me what worked, didn't work, did you have a special shop name for your shop? Ours is held on a Saturday, as we do not hold it during instruction time. We hold this event with our breakfast with Santa. I am even thinking of designing kid appropriate surveys to get their input. The parents are so used to junky things, that the kids only come in and buy junk for themselves. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[MaryPoppinsFan]

As PTL president for many years I have ran the event at our school quite a few times. We call ours the Christmas Boutique and we do hold it during school hours, usually 2 weeks before we get out on vacation. Our school is an extremly small LUtheran school. We ask every family to donate 12 items to the boutique. they get to claim some parent service hours adn we get a nice assortment of stuff. Everything sells for 1.00. the kids love it, we have adult volunteer to help with wrapping and to help the little ones shop. We do decorate the area and play Christmas music to set the mood.
one year a local store going out of business gave us a huge bag of tiny stuffed animals, those were a big hit. the craft idea is a good one. i'd rather have homemade things then some of the stuff the kids buy but they are so excited to give the gifts it's all good. :)

[Tinkermom]

Our school does not have a Christmas store but we do have a Fall basket auction. Each class is assigned a theme for the basket and families are asked to donate to the basket and then a volunteer or two from each class puts the basket together. My daughter's 2nd grade class's basket theme was family games. They were asking for everything from board games to popcorn/popcorn bowls to footballs, etc. Each basket is then put out for a silent auction to bid on. Many families go out and try to get local businesses to donate items as well. Another thing each class does is make something special to go into/with their basket. Some of the classes have had really cool stuff like quilts where each child created their own square and small stools that each child helped to paint and then signed. Some have had scrapbooks as well. The kids really get into this and it is an amazing fundraiser, usually around $5,000.

[Beast_fanatic]

The company that I used to work for was involved in a similar program. They asked the employees for donations of items, and those items were sold in the store. If there are any large employers in your area, you might check into having them start a similar program.

[sardanem]

We have done a Holiday Boutique a few different ways. One was running to all the dollar stores and buying everything and then running back there again when we ran out. You need to decide of you are doing the sale as a fundraiser or just for the experience of the kids shopping. We have found, as a school that calling a fundraising company that ships us everything from the items to be sold, tablecloths, bags, a cash register and envelopes for the kids to take home seems to work really well. The items range in price from about $1.00 to $10.00 and I have found the quality of the thing to be pretty decent. The good thing is is that you don't pay until it is over, so whatever doesn't sell, goes back to the company and if we run out, they will overnight more. We don't make a lot of money, but I don't think it should be a money making event. We do enough fundraisers as it is. We also do not sell anything religious because there a many different ethnic and religious groups at our school. We are very multicultural, so rather than have some people mad that we are selling Christmas stuff and nothing for Chanukah or Kwanzaa, we just sell non religious items. If you would like any more info, please feel free to PM me. I am VP of fundraising this year, so I am covered in papers all the time now.

Lisa

[TiggeRia]

Our local school used to do one, but like you said, it was full of junky little items that were ridiculously overpriced. I volunteer with our local emergency squad and auxiliary, and for the past several years the auxiliary has put on a "Santa's Workshop" that has become quite successful. It is a yearlong project, though, and we only have a handful of members. One Friday every month, the auxiliary gets together and works on some kind of craft - whether it be ornaments, decorations, games, warming rice packs, etc...Some members knit or crochet and make blankets, scarves, and whatnot. We also collect new items throughout the year (think recycled gifts!) and sell them for much less. There are several people in the area who also collect and donate new items to be sold. We collect enough items and make enough crafts to fill a large room with items to buy. We also offer free gift wrapping and snacks to everyone (we have a fair share of adults who show up to shop, too) and have Santa show up one of the days for free photographs. We usually make about $2000 over the course of about four days, which isn't a whole lot, but it's pretty good when you only have five or six people putting the event together. :santa2:

[tink179]

My husband is President of our PTA and we go through a holiday store. We call ours Santa's Secret Shop and we do only a few decorations as it is kids shopping, not the parents and they don't care how it's decorated. All they're focused on is the items for sale. We run ours during the week before and after school. The first day of the program we have a preview where during the day each teacher brings their students at their scheduled time to the shop, and the kids are given papers to mark down what they would like to get people in their family. Just prices, so when they go home their family know how much to send with them, and they don't know what they're receiving. We're going through a different company this year that provides a cash register with all the items already priced. With a varitey of prices from 10cents upwards to probably $20. We do the shop more as fun for the kids, so we don't hardly mark anything. We might make $50 from it. We have a school of 340 students. Last year someone had a suggestion like yours of kids making things, or parents donating things, or officers going out and buying stuff. That is way too much of a hassle for our school. Here's the reasons why as officers we decided to go through a store again. At our school we don't have hardly any parent involvement and a lot of the children receive reduced lunches. We're not about to ask the parents to donate items to this event when it could be tough for most of them to do that, going out and trying to buy a variety of things and enough of them so you don't run out is terribly hard! If you run out it doesn't guarantee that you'll be able to go back and get more of that item. The teachers would rather not have the kids making things for the shop when it would interfere with their lesson plans. The kids love it and look forward to it every year. If you have anymore questions just PM me! :mickey:

[Katzateer]

Our grade school would have the shop every year. My girls loved getting items. All the items we had were bought. They didn't seem that expensive. I won't say some of them weren't junky but the kids like that kind of stuff.

I would usually give them $10 each and they got something for mom, dad, a sister and sometimes a little something for a pet.

For the younger grades the kids were thrilled to get items for family members. I remember a glass angel my youngest got for me when she was in 1st grade. She was so PROUD. I think it cost $3 or $5. That was the first ornament we had to put on each year. A few years after she got it, the ornament got broken and she was in tears (she was in 6th grade by then).

The kids that couldn't afford to get gifts also were able to get an item for their parents and siblings. The PTO and some sponsors would give them gift bucks they had to earn by doing something special or getting a good grade or doing something kind for someone. The teachers would decide who needed the gift dollars. It was great since some of the kids wouldn't have been able to get their parents a gift and for some siblings it was the only gift they got.

[c&d]

We call ours Winter Wonderland and every item is $5 or below and each child can purchase up to 5 items. Ours is self funding in that the money raised from the previous year is used to fund the current years event.

This past year there have been 4 of us who have been purchasing things all year. We hit the after Holidays sales last year like wild women. I've also purchased $5 DVD's from the Discovery channel when they have sales. I've also found a great website that has neat things (keychains with tape measures and mini calculators). I don't think I can mention the site here so please e-mail me if you're interested.

We also ask parents to donate things as well. The PTO will also gift wrap one present for each child.

Since ours is held in the cafetorium we use the lunch tables to set out all the items. Each grade will have a special set of items that will be put out when that grade arrives so that not all the "good stuff" is gone by the time the last grade gets there.

[DisneyCrazyET]

When I was involved we called it a Holiday Shop. We used a company that provided everything. Bags, cash register, tablecloths and a one dollar coupon for each student.
Everything was pre priced from 25 cents to 5 dollars. They had items that cost more but we put a limit on it. They were given envelopes ahead of time with a listing for whom they were buying for and amount. A helper walked around with them. They were only allowed to spend the free coupon on themselves.
We went the spring before to the company and marked off the items we wanted for the shop. Anything that we felt was not up to par or contained batteries we didn't include. We decorated some and provided refreshments to the helpers. I know that the other school in our district bought stuff throughout the year and they had many items left and not much storage for them.

[conorsmom2000]

When I was involved we called it a Holiday Shop. We used a company that provided everything. Bags, cash register, tablecloths and a one dollar coupon for each student.
Everything was pre priced from 25 cents to 5 dollars. They had items that cost more but we put a limit on it. They were given envelopes ahead of time with a listing for whom they were buying for and amount. A helper walked around with them.

I'm the PA President at my son's school and this is exactly what we do. We use the same company that we use for our Fall fundraiser. Our items run from 25 cents to $7.50. Everything else is exactly the same - they give us the items, bags, table cloths and envelopes for the children. The parents can list exactly who they want the kids to shop for and how much they can spend on each present. We can also go online to select the items we want to sell.

The kids just love this shop, especially the younger ones. Yes, some of the items are a little junky - like the "sapphire" earrings Conor gave me one year that made my ears itch!! :blush: But, he is sooooo proud of himself and has to rush home to wrap them right away! One year he bought 5 of his Aunts the same "#1 Aunt" key chain, which they thought was hysterical. (not the key chain, but the fact they were all #1!) Many of the items are things like mugs, caps, books, pens, key chains, etc. We don't have the coupon but we do have a treasure box that every student, whether they shopped or not, gets to pick a prize from. This all works very well for our school! :mickey:

[julyjewel]

Please keep your ideas coming. thanks so much.

[Marker]

My husband is President :mickey:

AWESOME!!! AWESOME!!! AWESOME!!!
Kudos - that your school is a PTA school, and
Kudos - that your husand is president. Male involvement is important and is a growing focus with PTA. Hope he stays with it. I've been involved at various levels for 15+ years.
FYI - 2011 PTA National Convention will be at WDW, at the Coronado Springs Resort.

I too was a PTA unit president at an elementary school for a couple years. We also used the Santas Secret Shop. The convience was great. They had various levels of gifts, in both quality and price, they could provide. They also provided cash registers which were a big help.

We too did not really do this as a fundraiser, we did it for the children. So we did not have a mark-up on our prices making them somewhat reasonable.

The way ours worked, we did it on a Friday night and Saturday. Parents would bring up their child, with a predetermined (by the parent) amount of money they were allowed to spend, as well as a list of who they were buying for. We then had assistants go shopping with them to help make sure they stayed within their budget and bought for everyone on their list. Sometimes our shopping assistants were other parent volunteers, sometimes we utilized older student.

After they made their purchases, we helped them wrap the presents. The kids were always VERY excited. And at least for my kids, they couldn't wait for us to open the presents they bought for us. While the gift itself may not have be on the top of our list, they were bought with love and meant more than the rest.