The Riley Carnival finally happened, which was very exciting in the beginning, but a little disappointing at the end. To begin with I had called Petsmart a few days ahead of time and asked if they could have 25 individual bags of goldfish ready by noon on Saturday, so that we could use them as prizes. When I arrived at noon I waited 15 minutes only to find out that no one had bagged any fish, so I waited for about 45 minutes for them to bag them all. I was talking to the woman who was bagging all the fish and telling her all about the Carnival and how excited I was, when another woman came up behind me and told me they couldn't sell the fish to a Carnival. I had called ahead and mentioned they were for a carnival, I waited 45 minutes talking to a woman as she bagged all of the fish for the carnival and then they finally told me and the whole process had made me very late.
Anyways I guess the whole project was a learning experience, even though the Carnival was not nearly as popular as we were hoping. We set everything up and had rules, signs, donation buckets, tons of prizes, games and a bounce house to top it all off. There was a total of about 3 families that showed up, which was hard to think about because we were expecting at least 10 times that. I guess it was a good thing that we didn't get the fish after all. In the future we will definitely need to do more advertising. We emailed all of the elementary and middle school principals and we hand delivered flyers to put in their offices, we even had Mr. Large send out multiple blasts to New Pal Parents. We also tweeted about it and talked to several teachers about talking to their students, so I'm not exactly sure where we went wrong. Probably the biggest factor was that the elementary carnivals are coming up to raise money for the PTO and parents don't want to send their kids to multiple carnivals in such a short amount of time. On the bright side we did get about $100 in donations, which was a lot more than anticipated since very few people came.
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This week we have gotten all of our carnival games and stored them under the main gym bleachers. We have also gotten all of our carnival prizes. We ordered sticky lizards, a bunch of inflatable toys and balloons and all sorts of stuff that is going to make this carnival a success. Caroline and I have worked so hard to pull this project together and I am so excited to see it all fall into place next week. I just hope enough kids show up!
The Riley Carnival is roughly a month away and Caroline and I are scrambling to get everything done. We have talked with a local bounce house rental and they agreed to lower their prices to $100, since it is a charity event and its taking place at a school. The next thing we need to do is get ahold of the local PTO for one of the elementary schools, as we need to borrow some Carnival games. I have planned all of our expenses out on a google excel spreadsheet and so far we are under budget which is very helpful since we will probably need to buy some more things for the carnival, such as extra decorations, etc. The next month is gong to be crazy busy, but I could not be more excited for this event to finally happen. At some point Caroline and I need to order items and go to Party City to buy some extra Carnival things. We also need to start advertising soon for the Carnival and talk to Mrs. Clayton about using the Carnival as a volunteer opportunity for members of National Honors Society, since we will need many volunteers to run each of the games.
Caroline and I are nearly finished with painting poster boards for a game we are making for the Riley Carnival. We have spent the past couple of weeks getting the poster board and drawing and painting them and they are turning out great!!! The game will be to attach balloons to the poster boards and kids will try to throw things at them to pop them. I am so excited about this project and what is to come with this Carnival. We have also worked out a few prize options for our potential games and they are all really cheap but also really fun!!
Since the last time I blogged, Caroline Dunbar and I have changed most of our original proposal. We made some major changes in order to attract more people to our event. The first change is that we won't necessarily be dancing at the marathon although we will encourage everyone to stay on their feet while they are there. We are also hoping to have a band or a music system of some kind and a dance area for those who want to dance, since we're still calling it a dance marathon. For the main attraction, Carol and I have decided to do a carnival type of thing and we will set up a bunch of different booths and games to play. Our plan is to charge money at the door for tickets so that people can use tickets to play the games and earn prizes. We also applied and were rewarded with a $250 grant from generationOn Indiana, so that all of the donations can go towards Riley instead of going towards money for supplies for the Carnival. We were planning on using some of our funds on a sand art station. I found a great website that gives us tons of ideas for cheap but fun carnival ideas. We also might borrow a tank and buy a bunch of goldfish as prizes for certain carnival prizes.
Caroline Dunbar and I have started to put together a proposal to start a Riley Dance Marathon at our school. We really wanted to donate to Riley and make our district a "Miracle School District." We went to the guidance offices and spoke with Mrs. Long and she told us all about the past Riley Dance Marathons at our school and gave us some really great contacts for our future dance marathons.
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AuthorThere is no need to be fancy. Archives
February 2018
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