School carnival- a parents view

 

After Kai’s blog post about the Essex Heights School Carnival I could not stay behind and write about my view of this day. If you are curious about what the people on the picture above are looking at, then continue reading and Luka (7) will give you the answer!

The Carnival is a fundraiser for the school and it has kept us parents busy for months. The carnival had several rides, an animal farm, food stalls, a silent auction, face painting, pre-owned toys and books, several activities and stalls where you could purchase plants and home made items.

We received newsletters advising us how we could help and/or donate and every class had a stall assigned to them. The parent rep would be responsible for getting things organized.

Our class stalls

Luka’s class was in charge of the ‘bottle of luck’, Kai’s class for the ‘pirate digg’.

For the ‘bottle of luck’ stall (Luka’s class) everybody in the school could donate a bottle of wine, beer, spirits or a soft drink with a $10 gift voucher all had to be worth of at least $10. At the end about 110 bottles were donated. During the carnival these were all wrapped in newspaper and stalled. For $10 you could pick out one lucky bottle and keep it. One parent owns a winery and donated a box of Shiraz and a box of sparkling wine, so those were probably  to luckiest draws.

I helped the parent rep with the preparations of the Pirate dig. Part of the gifts were bought and one very generous parent donated gifts from China.  We made the most effort in decoration our stall in style. We had a pirate flag, an almost real treasure box, we made barrels and the children from class made four big paintings. It was good to see that the children seemed to appreciate that, as we where almost out of gifts by the end of the day.

Kai and Luka’s favorite stalls

Both Kai and Luka had a blast. Kai’s (grade 3) favorite stall was the lob-a-choc, read more in his Blog Post that he wrote about it. Luka’s (grade 2 – five months of English) favorite part was the teacher dunk.  Read her impression of this day here:

The result

It was a fun and very rewarding day! We did spent way too much money on the event: the wristband for unlimited rides was $ 27 per child ! Then add the donations of wine, chocolate, a home made item and cake.  And finally the money spent on the day on books, activities the silent auction and food.

I have heard of schools making more then $ 100.000 on such an event. It was the first Carnival at Essex Heights Primary School and although we did not raise quite that amount, the end result has been impressive.

The organizers, who are all parents as well, have done an amazing job!