Winter Fayre 2023 - before

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA podcast. My name is Yvonne, and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budget, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. Hi, welcome to episode 11 of the PTA Podcast. We have now officially entered that crazy time of year as we plough towards the Christmas holidays. I'm actually recording this on the 1st of December and I'm looking over across my lounge at my beautiful Christmas tree, which we put up on Wednesday, which obviously wasn't December. We had to put it up a couple of days early because this weekend we're we're quite busy and we wouldn't have any time to really appreciate putting the beautiful tree up and adding all the twinkly lights and tinsel, which is one of my most favourite things to do at this time of year. So my Christmas tree's up, and it's the law in our house that if somebody's in the lounge, you have to have the Christmas tree lights on. So it's twinkling at me from across the way there, which is lovely. So yeah, Christmas. It's a very big time of year for PTAs. Um, as just like the summer term, it's when some of the biggest fundraisers are held. Certainly the case for us. Is that the case for you? Have you got many events this Christmas term? Maybe you've just got one big one. I know some people do a few little ones. Um we've just um we've kind of done sort of two events this term which I'll um I'll go on and talk about. Um, but it's it's also such a busy time of year for people personally and their personal lives that I always feel conscious as chair not to bog everyone down on my organizing committee with extra things to do when everybody's already got tons of things to do. So I am conscious of that. Last episode I said that I wanted to record more frequently, and I've been um scuppered by my own PTA organisation I'm planning. Oh dear, so I'm here to give you an update on what's been going on in my PTA world. So that's what we're going to talk about this episode. The other thing I wanted to mention though is I don't know if you've noticed, but do I sound any better on this podcast? Because my husband treated me to a new microphone because I reached episode 10 last time. So I have I kind of feel like I look like a radio DJ right now because I've got one of those microphones that clamps onto my table, and I'm sitting here with my headphones talking into a microphone with one of those um puffy things on the end of it. Um, and I've got a new recording box and I can do things like this. That's so cool, isn't it? And I can do this. So somebody will always laugh at my joke, and when I say something really excellent, I can do this. And then finally, I can do this. So I have four sound effects that I can now add into my podcast at appropriate moments. So we'll see how that goes, and I hope I don't annoy you too much with pressing those buttons too often. So so far, um, since September, because I talked about uh the AGM uh a couple of episodes ago, um, we've run three events since the AGM. We've had a non-uniform day, uh, we've run a secondhand clothing and uh secondhand uniform sale, and we have sorted out some Christmassy tea towels, which I have talked about previously, so I'll just give you a little rundown of those. Um, those three things are quite straightforward to organise, um, and we managed to squeeze in the non-uniform day um and the secondhand clothing and uniform sale just before half term. So that was pretty cool that we managed to just get a couple of things in um squeezed into that first term of the year. So the non-uniform day, um, we've sort of agreed with school that each last day of term is going to be a non-uniform day. So our first one just to kick kick the year off is just a straightforward one, and we just said just non-uniform, anything you like, and we collected a pound in cash for that for the donation. Um, we have at a planning meeting planned the next um I think it's uh I think it's the next four. So for Christmas, just before the Christmas holidays, we're just going to do one lasse term, and just again it's quite simple, it's just non-uniform, or you can wear something Christmassy. So I guess a lot of children will probably wear Christmas jumpers if they've got that, maybe a Santa hat or something. Then um just before Easter, we're doing a crazy hair day, which I've done before, and I think I've talked about that before, but the kids love those ones, and then at the end of um May, we're going to be doing a Break the Rules Day, which we tried for the first time last year, and it was incredibly popular. So we've penciled those ones in for now. Um, we haven't organised anything for the summer term yet because it just gets so busy with sports day and summer fates and other activities, so we haven't um put one in for the end of that term. Um, but anyway, yeah, they're always really popular. The kids love them. I remember loving them when I was a child, and it made the whole day at school feel completely different and completely special just because I was wearing different clothes. Um, it's funny to think that really, but yes, that that that's you know a simple thing, everyone can take part. Um, we asked for a donation. The donation isn't compulsory for anybody who can't afford it, we don't want any child to miss out, and we collected cash for that. So that was our non-uniform day. Then we decided to try um a secondhand clothing sale. Well, the idea came from me actually want I really decided that I wanted to push the secondhand uniform a bit more this year. Um, we do have a little stash of secondhand uniform at school, but it doesn't sort of come out very much. I don't think people are really aware that it's there, and I really wanted to bring it more to the forefront and have it at more events. My uh committee felt that we could open up a second hand uniform tail to other secondhand clothes, so we did a little um poll on the parents' WhatsApp group just to see whether people will be interested in that or not. And yes, people were interested, and they said they had clothing to donate. So for our first one, we thought, oh, let's just go for it, let's just accept anything and see what happens. So we had um general children's clothing and um uniform, secondhand uniform. So parents um donated bags of clothing that they didn't need, and we had so many bags, we had so many bags. Um luckily we had also a few extra volunteers. So there were five of us um in the school hall um an hour before the uniform sale, um, trying to arrange all these clothes that had been donated, then they were all random sizes. So each bag you opened, it was you know full of randomly sized clothes. So it took us a whole hour, a really good solid hour with five adults um helping to put all the clothes out in sections, you know, put some tables out. One of my friends um has got some clothing rails, so we borrowed those, which really helped as well, just to spread everything out. Um, and yeah, five people, a good solid hour, so that's five hours worth of work just to get the clothes out. So if you're thinking of running a second-hand sale, don't underestimate the amount of time it might take you to actually put all the stuff out and make it look nice, you know. Um we also had a little bit of help from one of the um children's councils at school. So my school has a few different ways of getting involved that the children can get involved. So we have like a library committee, which I think is called the reading squad or something. Um, we have the school council, we have an eco-council, we have sports crew, a few different things that you know children can feel like they're taking part and making decisions at school. So the eco council were quite keen to help. So they did come along and help us put out the clothes as well, which was really lovely. Uh, the other thing we did for the sale, just because it was just before half term, is we advertised it um and also said that you know we welcome new parents to the school to come along and have a cup of tea and socialise whilst you know having a look at the clothes. So we just served tea, coffee, and biscuits, kept it really simple. Um, and we also opened it at uh 2.45, which is about half an hour before um school pickup time, so that parents could come in and browse without their children being there, um, and also have you know tea and coffee. So it's just you know encouraging parents to just arrive a little bit earlier at school so they could come and have a bit of social time and also come and browse the sale. I did notice that not everybody came into the sale. Um I I I wouldn't really be able to tell you sort of percentage-wise how many parents did come in, but but there weren't loads of people there. Uh we did raise um £100 from the sale, which I don't think was too bad considering everything was donated, so we didn't have to buy anything apart from tea, coffee, and biscuits, which you know are very cheap. And um the prices were we kept the prices really low to try and shift um as much as we could, and uh the most we charged was two pounds, I think, for a coat, I think coats were two pounds, and all the uniform um was a pound an item, so we kept the costs really low. Uh when we were putting the clothes out in the hall though, my friend did point out to me, which is something I hadn't noticed until she pointed out, that most of the clothes we had donated were girls' clothes. So I'm a mum of three boys, and my friend is also a mum of three boys, and she said, gosh, you know, Von, there's hardly any boys' clothes here, and then when I actually looked round the room, I saw she was completely right. There were hardly any boys' clothes, which was which was really interesting, and I hadn't even thought that that might be a problem or that that might happen. I just I guess I just assumed it was going to be about 50-50. Um, so that was interesting to learn, something definitely to bear in mind. Although, obviously, if you're just accepting donations, you can't control what those donations are. But yeah, 80 to 90 percent of what we were selling were girls' clothes. Uh, I don't know if that's because people tend to buy more clothes for girls, because I know when I go shopping for my boys' clothes, there's just tons and tons of girls' options and a tiny hanger at the back which has a few boys' options on it. It's very frustrating for me as a mother, and I like shopping as well. Um, that I can't choose, you know, there's not a lot of choice really, it's quite different. Um, or whether boys' clothes just get more holes in and get a bit wrecked from the way that boys play and you know what they do. Um, so yeah, I'm not quite sure, but anyway, that that's what we discovered with our first clothing sale. So something we tried new was a card reader. Uh so my friend had a sum up card reader that she used to use for a little business that she ran, but she's not using it anymore, so she donated it to the PTA, and we just had to um change the ownership details on the account, so she had to contact some up and just figure out how we could get it swapped over, and it was really straightforward. Um, they gave us the instructions and we completed it, put in the PTA bank details, and basically then it was just ready to go. Um, I downloaded the app onto my phone, and that that was kind of it. So we were in the school hall, so we could connect onto the school Wi-Fi, which I think definitely helped that, but it was so easy to use. Um, and about a third of our sales were using the card machine, so that was really great. Knowing that you know people were not scrubbing around for cash, they didn't have any, it didn't put them off coming to the sale because we had the card machine there. So that's very exciting for our PTA going forward that we now have a card machine and we used it and it worked really well. Um, and people were just you know tapping their cards on it, and then the money would end up in our PTA account within just a few days, so it was a very quick, lovely turnaround, fantastic. Then all the clothes left over, which there were quite a lot because we we had so many donations and we didn't sell. Oh gosh, I don't know. I feel like we only sold about 10% or maximum 20% of the clothes that were there. They still looked like when when we were packing up, it looked like no one had come into the sale at all. Like all the tables was still looked really, really full, all the rails still looked really full. So it looked like nothing had happened, but we had sold £100 worth. Um, so we bagged up the rest of the clothes and put them out for the school's clothing collection. So my school has signed up to um uh Bags to School, I think it is, um, and they are in charge of organising those collections, so we just um gave the clothes to them and I think our I think the clothing collection was only a week later, so it actually worked out really well that they didn't have to um store the clothes for very long. So winners all round really, and um we did sell quite a bit of uniform, it was definitely worth having that uniform out there, and I think it's something that we would um try and do again. In fact, I think a parent has already asked when our next one is, so that's a bonus, so that's good. It's good when parents you know tell you indirectly that it was a good event to uh to run and hold. So uh so yeah, our secondhand clothing and uniformsel went pretty well. Right, and then the next thing we did uh just around the half-term time was to sort out our uh tea towels. So I first ran this as a fundraiser about three years ago um during COVID times because it was quite quite a nice socially distanced fundraiser, uh, which so that was three years ago, so we thought at the AGM it was probably about time that we did another one. Um now I have talked through my process on T TAW's, I think it was episode three, um, so I'll just give you a little quick sort of brief overview of what I did in case you haven't heard that one. We use the same company again, which is Countryside Art, who are absolutely fantastic. They have excellent customer service. I mean that their their time they take to apply to emails is so fast, so they must have an army of people replying to emails. They are accurate and fast and polite and friendly, and I couldn't fault them at all. So big shout out to Countryside Art. So the way that I organise this, um, as you know, we're quite a small school, so we have about 85 children, and so we can fit all our whole school onto one T towel, plus um the teachers and members of staff, and the easiest way to get the children to do their faces is that I um give each teacher um an envelope with little you know squares in it that are the right size. So when Countryside Art sends you um the art pack for making the tea towel, there's really clear instructions in there of how big the children have to draw their um faces depending on how many children you want to fit on the tea towel. So we had to go for a square rectangle actually that was five centimetres by six centimetres. So I cut those out ready and I put them in an envelope with clear instructions for the class teacher. Um, and the teachers got the children to draw their faces and then they passed them all back to me because um sending something like that home is just going to end in disaster. I just know it, and um, luckily the teachers are more than happy to help us out with that. So I actually got the children to draw their pictures with a pencil, and then once I'd received all the pictures back, I went over all of their drawings and their names with a black felt tip pen which I had at home. I um did the layout of the tea towel by sticking all the pictures on, and then I sent the tea towel off to the uh off to countryside art for them to work their magic. I took a photo of the tea towel once I'd completed it so that I had a record of it and so that I could show it to parents. Um so we could begin the process of parents ordering their tea towel in advance. So um so the way it works is we send the tea towel design of to the tea towel company, they process it, they can send us back what they call a proof photo of what the tea towel will look like in the chosen chosen um print colours, but you have to wait an extra seven to ten working days for that, and I didn't really have time to wait for that, so that's why I used the photo that I had taken, which obviously is not great quality, and you can see all this cutting out marks and the glue stick and stuff in it, anyway. Just gives you you know, you just need an just need a rough idea. So we uh didn't need to wait for the proof from the company to start taking orders. Um, but horror of horrors, a child was missed off the tea towel. Oh, it's like worst nightmare situation. So I had the school send out an email, obviously, with the photo of the tea towel attached and telling parents how they could order the tea towel, and the parent of the child noticed that her child was not on the tea towel. Um, and oh I was just oh disaster. So I I don't know what happened exactly. She must have got missed, maybe she wasn't at school or something, she just got missed, and I wasn't past um her picture. So what I did was I immediately got her to draw her picture, and while she was completing that, I um contacted Countryside Art, who were brilliant, and reassured me that it was all gonna be okay, um, that the art department would manage to squeeze her in somehow and um said it was fine, and so it was amazing that they just said, Yes, it's no problem, just send the picture. Whereas I was, you know, in a bit of a state thinking, oh my gosh, we've missed a child. So thank you so much to Countryside Art. I'm gonna give you a round of applause. Yeah, they were brilliant, and their art department did manage to squeeze um the extra portrait in. I have no idea how they managed to do that. I really don't know because when I put all the faces on the tea towel, I didn't leave any um big gaps in between the faces because I couldn't because we had so many pictures. So how on earth they squeezed in one other picture and also in the right section as well, because I kind of did reception and reception and nursery at the bottom, and then key stage one and then key stage two at the top. So they even got her in the right section. Amazing. I don't know how how they did it, but thankfully they did, and it was all okay. So we kept our um tea towel ordering um really, really simple. We got parents to order it through the school system um and we kept it simple at five pounds per tea towel. We didn't do any special multiple order discounts or anything because I I believe that just leads to chaos. And um also each tea towel costs the same to print, so we just charge the same for each tea towel. So it was really simple. They just the parents just had to say how many they wanted, and they were charged accordingly. Um and then I passed on our total order to countryside art and I added on about uh I think I added on five extra tea towels just in case somebody wished they'd bought an extra one or something. Um and now we're just waiting for them to arrive, and they should be with us next week because our um our winter fair is a week today on Friday, and the idea is that parents come to the winter fair to collect their tea towel orders, which is a really easy way of giving them out and also encourages people to come to our fair. Um, we did do it like that three years ago, and it it worked brilliantly. So um so that's kind of tea towels done. Um I gave the parents a really short deadline to order the tea towels as well because I didn't want to have to keep sending out reminder emails, so I think I gave them about a week, I gave them about five days to get their orders in um just to make sure people were on it and didn't forget, and also I didn't forget to remind them. So I've found with things like this that a short deadline tends to work a lot better. Um, it also works really well if you're doing an online raffle. A shorter deadline to buy tickets just keeps people focused, and um you know it doesn't kind of drop off the bottom of their to-do list, so I'm all for short deadlines myself. Woo! Okay, and that brings me on to our big event this term, which is our winter fair. As I said, it's our week today, and we are running it after school, in the hall, uh, and in a couple of classrooms, so it's going to finish at 5 pm. And the winter fair is the reason why I haven't done my podcast because I've been busy with this event, because I am the chair of the PTA. So we've got just over well, just a week to go. So I'll just brief you on where we are right now. Um, I just love fates and fairs, whatever you want to call them. I think there's so many great things about this type of event. I think it's it's a wonderful way to bring the community of a school together because people or volunteers are running stalls for other people to come and enjoy. Um, and I just think seeing that work in practice is really lovely. There's a huge variety of things to do because it's a sort of stall-based uh system for want of a better word. So there's something for everybody and there's something for all ages, and you um, you know, it's really nice as an as an adult, as a parent, to help your child go around the stalls and see how much they enjoy doing certain things. I I just really love it. Um, you can get people to spend more money than they think they are spending because it's just 50p or a pound here and there, which very quickly adds up in a fundraising total. So we have made the decision over the past few years to keep the costs of our stalls as low as possible. Um, so most of our games that we run are just 50p, um, and most of the other things are just a pound. I think um obviously the tea towels we'll be selling, although they've been pre-ordered. But if anyone wants an extra one, they are five pounds, but that's a bit of a different thing. Um, most of our other stuff does not stretch beyond a pound, even the cakes in the cafe uh max out at a pound, so we try and keep it really affordable for everybody. Um, but it does mean that because everything's just 50 per a pound, I think people don't really realise how much they are spending, which goes to our advantage sometimes. Oh, I suppose the other thing that um where you might spend more than a pound is of course the raffle. Um, each individual ticket for the raffle is one pound, um, and then we do five pounds a strip, which is I think quite a standard thing. So um we do find that most people do buy a strip, which is really great, so they might spend a bit more on the raffle. Uh, the other reason I really like fates is it's a lovely way for the children to take part in a fundraiser. I think a lot of the fundraisers that uh PTA might organise have to be organised by adults and have to be run by adults, but as a fate, you can have children really taking part at the coal face. You know, they're behind a stall, they might have organised a stall completely by themselves that they want to run for their friends, and I think it's so fantastic for them to have that sort of responsibility, but for them, it's just so much fun. You know, every time I see a child running a stall at a fate, they are having a good time every time they are sharing the responsibility with a friend, they're encouraging their other friends to come over and play, they love explaining it to somebody else and helping the younger children have a go. Ah, it's I just love it, it makes me feel all warm inside. I just love it. And one of my favourite things to do in my spare time is to think of ideas for stalls, um, especially if we have a theme. I just think it's so much fun. Um, you know, getting like a traditional fate game and putting a twist on it so that it fits with the theme that you have organized. Um, organizing uh, you know, the signs and the decorations and the tablecloth and the napkins and stuff to all kind of try and fit towards a theme is also really fun, and I think it makes the event more magical if it's like that. I loved these events as a child. I don't think I went to enough of them, so I'm trying to make sure that I run enough fates now as an adult. And as I said, a fate has all the favourite things that I would choose, it has games to play, it has crafts to do, it has yummy food, and you can go and have as many cakes as you want. Nobody's gonna tell you off because it's all for the school. Uh, and you get to chat to your friends, you get to socialise a bit. Oh, it's just fantastic, just so much fun, and that's why um that's why I just relish the opportunity to organise these kinds of things. But they are very labour-intensive events, and now we come on to the usual PTA struggle of getting people to volunteer, and it's just so frustrating, as I know that you know, because you're in the same boat as me. Um, so about a week ago, this was where I was. I felt like I was in limbo land trying to finalise the planning so we can actually run the event. Um, but waiting for people to sign up, it's just such a headache and so frustrating. And obviously, if you're not on the organizing committee, you don't understand that the sooner people sign up, the easier it is for those people organizing the event to actually do the planning and decide which stores you can run and then which stalls you can't run because you don't have a volunteer. Such a headache. Um, in my experience, there is no easy answer to getting a volunteer to sign up to your event. The only thing I think you can do is just to keep asking your parents, and they might get annoyed with you, keeping on asking, but you just have to keep going with it. Um this time for this fair, I actually put 40-minute slots down um to try and encourage people to sign up. So, you know, I thought, or maybe somebody doesn't want to get stuck running a store for the entire fair, so I'll split it down into slots so they can do it for a bit and then they're free to look round. I suggested that people could volunteer with a friend so it's social for them. Um, we do have the older children helping out. Um, so there's a there's a few games that I wanted to run at the fair, and so I've asked the class teacher for the older children if she can find out who's interested in doing that. So that immediately gets you free volunteers, which is really good because the children always want to volunteer, they're always the best volunteers. Um, I even suggested to parents that it's an it's nice to involve your child. So if you volunteer to run a stall, involve your child, get your child to come and help you. Because, as I said before, the children have so much fun doing that, and I and I think sometimes adults don't see it as fun like the children do, so involving your child is is also a really positive thing that you could do, so that's why I highlighted that to the parents. Um I also I also highlighted the fact that running a stool is a really rewarding experience, and you're not, you know, don't view it as just being stuck behind a stool for an hour and a half or whatever. I know everybody who has taken part and done something afterwards has had a good time and they leave with a smile on their face. And some uh a lady who'd never volunteered before actually put a message on our uh parents' WhatsApp group. Um, I think it was which of the fellow, maybe a couple of years ago, she volunteered for the first time to help with our cafe, which just sells cakes and hot drinks and squash. And um, she put a message out saying how much she had enjoyed volunteering, which was amazing. You know, nobody had told her to put a message out, but she did it under her own volition, and and that as a PTA chair reading that message, I was I was really happy and pleased, and I obviously really hoped that that would encourage other parents to volunteer to see somebody else have a very um positive experience. But despite all those things, despite all those reasons you can give people to volunteer at an event, it is still so difficult. In fact, I think it's the hardest part of organising this type of event. It's you know, I've I it's a joy for me to come up with um ideas for stalls and to find a theme and to gather resources and things that you might need, but the hardest part is getting the volunteers, and until you have the volunteers signed up, you don't know which stalls you can do, and so it has this really difficult knock-on effect as well. Um so, yes, I have often thought, you know, if I had enough volunteers, it would organising organizing something like this would be a breeze, quite frankly, be fantastic. So the way that I tackled this volunteer problem is uh by using a website. So I've seen this website advertised on a few PTA forums, so I decided to give it a go because it looked really good and it's free and easy to use, and it's called Volunteer Sign Up, and it has really helped me. So before I use this website, I did actually use this uh for the first time for our summer fate uh back in July. Um, I don't think I've talked about it before, so I'll give you the details now. So before I discovered this website, I used to send an email out via school or put a message on the parents' WhatsApp group directly asking for volunteers, and I would just say we need volunteers to help at the summer fate or whatever, but I would give no indication of what they would be doing, uh no indication of the amount of time required, um, and uh the response I got was basically radio silence um because quite frankly, you know, who would volunteer if you didn't know what you're volunteering for? But I thought people might have come to ask me possibly, but but they just didn't. So now with this new website, um I have decided I've kind of changed my tack a bit really. Um we are much more proactive now. Um, we ask for specific jobs to be covered. Um and using this website didn't solve our volunteer problems exactly. I didn't achieve the amount of volunteers I would have loved to have. I still fell short, so we had to cut a few stalls from the from the summer fate. But it made asking for volunteers a lot easier, and I think we got a much better response, and we got more people than we would have done otherwise. So um, so I'm here to encourage you to you to have a go at this volunteer sign-up if you don't already use it, um, just to see if it makes a difference at your school. So the website's called volunteersignup.org. It's completely free, and the background to it um is that it began in Canada in 2010 by a small um ski club who were organizing an event and they needed some volunteers, and somebody created this sign-up sheet online basically for volunteers to sign up, and and that's how it started, and it's just grown and grown and grown, and it says on their website that in August uh 2022 um they have now seen eight million volunteer opportunities filled by people using this website to get volunteers to help at events or or whatever that they need volunteers for. So it's uh obviously such a great tool that lots of people are using. So, how it works is you uh have to sign up for an account, just do a sign-in, but I think all the details are just your name and your email address, it is that simple, and you create a sign-up sheet, and what you do is you name your sign-up sheet of the event or activity that you need volunteers for, and then you just add in rows, and in those individual rows, you are writing a little description of what you need the volunteer to do. Um, you're putting down what time the volunteer is required. So, for example, if it was for my winter fair, I would say, Oh, I need someone to um do the first slot in the cafe, um, and the cafe is serving cakes, hot drinks, and squash so that they know exactly what it is. Then the time that they're they're required, I would put something like um 3.20 till I don't know, 4 10 or something on my little um slot schedule, and then I would put how many volunteers I needed for that slot now for the cafe, it would definitely be two volunteers um in each slot because it can get quite busy. And then you basically just go down your sign-up sheet, you add in all of your stalls and all of the slots, and how many volunteers you need, and then once you have completed your uh volunteer sign-up sheet, um it will even generate an email for you to share, which you can copy and paste and just send out. It's also um a really easy link to share, so you can share it on WhatsApp, on email, put it on Facebook, anything you like. And people just click into it and they just um click on the um volunteer opportunity that they'd like to fill, they just put in their name and their contact details, so that then as the organizer you can follow up with them. And I found that really handy to thank them all afterwards too. So about a week before the event, which I guess is today, I will be just dropping all my volunteers a line saying thank you so much for volunteering, this is what I need you to do, and um, this is the time, you know, just confirming the details basically and being very grateful that they're volunteers. Um, so that was really great. Um, so the way that I used um this sheet is to basically just keep sharing every few days, and eventually, people do put their names on it. Eventually, you have to share it. I mean, I think I've shared it about five times in various different ways. Um, for some reason, nobody wanted to put their name down to do the tombola, and I'm not sure why that was, but the tombola just kind of just got left on its own with no volunteers. So I had to send um a sort of urgent plea out saying, explaining that you don't have to organise the tombola. My PTA is doing all the organisation, we're doing all the labelling, all you have to do is stand behind the store, take the money, give out the tickets, and help people find their prizes. That's all you have to do. Um, so uh I did explain that just in case anyone thought, Oh, I can't I can't organise that accepting loads of donations and sticking tickets on and stuff. So um, for yeah, for some reason the tombola got completely left, and it's really strange because the tombola is our most popular stall. Um, so I can only assume that either people didn't want to organise the whole thing or they just really want to play the tombola and don't want to get stuck behind the stall. Perhaps it's that. Who knows? We will never know. We will never know. So, alongside my sign-up sheet, I also have a master spreadsheet that I use now for all my fairs and fates, which I have uh improved, shall we say, over the years that I've organized all these events and it contains all the detailed information I need uh to make sure nothing gets forgotten. I do like organising things, especially organising things on paper. Uh, I do like to be in control of things, I do have quite a detailed outlook, um, so I'm not I like everything to be documented so that I know I haven't forgotten anything. Um, and the advantage of doing it this way is also that I can share um this organisation sheet with the rest of my PTA. So uh during setup, I do uh photocopy it and we have a few copies lying around so that other people can pick it up and you know see what's required on the different stalls. Um I'm going to put a blank one on my website just in case you might find it useful for your organisation. Um, but I'm just going to talk you through what I have on it now, and then you can see what I mean. Right, I have got my stall planning list open on my computer in front of me. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine columns. So my um my sheet is in a landscape mode on Word. My first column is just simply the number. So I've allocated each stall a number just so I can keep track of how many stalls I've got, and if I have to label anything, I can just write the number of the stall instead of writing its whole name. Then next column is stall name, so what I want to call the stall. So, for example, my first stall is the winter cafe. My my uh third column are the number of volunteers and who the volunteers are who are behind the stall. So, to start with, in the initial planning stages of an event, I fill out how many volunteers I'm going to need for each stall, even if I don't know who that is, just so I can count up how many people I am looking for to run the event. I just find that really useful. It's also a useful way of looking at the stalls, which are like the basic stalls that you would need to hold the event, the base minimum, I suppose, and then you know how many volunteers you need as a minimum for the event to go ahead, and then other stalls or games on top of that I will see as the sort of bonus stalls. So just having being able to count the number of volunteers is really handy, and then as I get volunteers in the volunteer sign-up sheet, I just add their names into this column of volunteers. Then uh my next column is just a description. So this isn't an entire description of the stall, it's just a description of the type of stall that it is. Uh, I have three broad categories for this. I have food and drink, I have craft, and I have game, and I highlight those words in different colours. So I highlight food and drink in yellow, craft in like a turquoise blue, and then game in green, so that when I scroll down my list, I can easily see how many um food and drink, craft and game stalls there are, or rather, I'm kind of looking for a balance between all those three. Now, of course, there are going to be stalls that don't fit into those categories, like the raffle, I wasn't really sure where to put that, and glitter tattoos, again, it's not really craft, it's not really a game. So some of my columns haven't been highlighted with that category, but that's okay because those ones stand out on their own anyway, and so I know that they're a bit different. So I just try and look at the description, see if we've got a balance between craft and game and enough food and drink to keep everybody happy. The next column are the charges. So this is what we will be charging people to take part in those stalls, and I try and be as accurate as possible. So for the cafe, I've got a pound or 50p per cake and a pound per hot drink. So whatever is being sold on the stall, I make sure that we have decided what charge that's going to be. So that's already documented. My next column is called equipment needed. So these this would basically be a list of all the things that that stall needs on its table or next to it to enable the stall to run. So for example, for the cafe, I list everything. So I've currently got tea, coffee, milk, sugar, cups, hot chocolate, spiced berry squash, because we're serving spiced berry squash, napkins, spoons, serving items like uh you know, cake servers and sharp knives and that sort of thing. So I try and list every single thing that that stall is going to need, so I have a definitive list of all the items that we need to gather. Some of my stalls, it says that a particular person is bringing all the equipment for that stall, which I write in the column so that I know I don't need to worry about that. Somebody else is going to be bringing all of those things. So I as I said, I'm a very detailed person and I like to be in control at all times. So I like to itemize everything I need, so it's all written down, it's not going right around my head. I've got it on this sheet, and I find it really, really handy. The next column is called prize. So here I'm just writing down if we need any prizes for the stall. Obviously, prizes are just really for the games, um, but it's really handy. Just I found it really handy, I think a couple of fates ago, just to pull that information out and make it stand out so that I knew how many prizes we need to get and to try and count up. Like I think I was buying some lollies or something and some sweets as prizes, and so I was trying to figure out how many to buy, so I had to count up how many stalls I needed prizes for, and so that's when I decided to add in a column that said what prizes were needed, whether the prizes were needed. This is also really handy if we're having a stall that's got like a competition on it. So, for example, at the Winterfair this year, we're having a blindfold drawing competition where the children have to put a blindfold over their eyes and they have to draw a snowman on a piece of paper, and we're going to have a prize for the best snowman for each class. And I just bought some um I think like sticker books or like little puzzle books, activity books uh to give out. So I need to make sure the prizes are on that table, and also that I bought the prizes, which I have, so that's good. Um the next column is just called notes and location. I'm not sure why it's called notes, and maybe I'll change that. So the location is obviously the location of the stall, uh, and the notes would be I will I use that just to put information about how many tables we need and how many chairs we need, and whether the chairs are adult chairs or children-sized chairs. So each stall has a location, each stall has a number of tables that it needs, and each stall has whether it needs chairs and what sort of chairs they are. And again, I just find it really useful to pull that information out so that I can then easily just count up how many chairs we need to pull out of the cupboard and how many tables we need to set up in a certain area. So when the setup people arrive, they can just kind of get on with it, and I can just say, right, we need seven tables over here, and we need five chairs, and over there we need four tables and we need four um children's chairs. It's just a really simple way of easily seeing exactly what we need. And then my final column is the to-do column where I make little notes about each stall and just things that I have to do, or things that have to be done. So it could be that I need to chat to a certain person who's organizing the stall and make sure they've got everything they need. So that's an action for me, or it might be an action that, as a group, um, my PTA needs to make a decision about that stall and what we have on it, or what we charge for it, or something like that. So it's basically all the things that we need to decide. And as I'm going along and going through my organization of the event, I'm my aim is to get the to-do column to be completely blank, which means I have crossed off everything on my to-do list and that stall is finished and organised. Um, another thing I do is I go through sorry, is I go through in my head and think, right, if my fair was tomorrow, which stalls have I completed um which I can actually put out tomorrow? And that's always a good um way of thinking about it, I find to sort of figure out which which ones are ready, which ones I've nearly got ready, but there's a couple of bits um outstanding, and and then I can just focus on getting those things done because I just the more columns um rows, sorry, the more rows of stalls I can tick off, the better. And the further in advance I can do it, even better, because I can stop thinking about it then. So that is my massive uh list of stalls. Then at the end of so my table for this particular event, my uh big table of stalls um is two pages, and then at the bottom of the table, I just have a little summary which is total number of tables required, total number of adult chairs, and total number of child chairs, and then I have a list of the setup volunteers, and then I just have a little bit more detail as to what we need to set up in each area. So, what we need to do, like put out the floats, put out the tablecloths, um, put out signs if we need the signs, that kind of thing. I just like to have it all ready because what happens to me um on the day of an event is that I get very anxious about it and I kind of a little bit flustered. It's not really fluster, it's it's sort of um, I don't really know how you describe it, but when I'm actually there in the situation, like in the school hall, and I have all of these things to do. Ah, yes, I've got it. It's uh feeling overwhelmed. That's the word I was looking for. I get very overwhelmed when I have so many things to do. And so if I can have itemise in advance what I need to put out, then um I can just check on my list, right? Okay, I know that in this area we need to put the tables out, we need to put the chairs out, we need to put the floats out, we need to put the signs out, we need to add tablecloths, we need to help so and so with their stool, I need to put the sign on the toilets, and I can just go down the list. And if necessary, I can ask another helper, right? Can you do this? This is on my list. So to avoid that overwhelm and to keep me focused, um, I just find this really useful. I'm sure many of you will have a different sort of system depending on your personality types and how your team works together. This is just the way that I found works for me. And the final thing that I have added on um to my big list, uh actually, there's two things. The first thing is just a list of last-minute jobs, and on my list of last-minute jobs is take a photo of all the stalls because I always forget to do this and then get really annoyed with myself afterwards that we haven't really got a record of what we put out. And I really intend this time next Friday to go around all the stores once they're set up and take a photo of it, obviously, avoiding you know any children in the picture, which is why it's really good to do it just before the fair opens. Um, so I I really want to make sure I do that this time, and then the final final thing right at the bottom is I have a little table which is called the wet weather plan. So I added this um back in July at our summer fate, where the weather was looking a bit dodgy. Now I haven't told you what happened at my summer fate yet. I I um did start recording an episode about that which I haven't finished, so um you uh you'll just have to wait for those uh nuggets of info from my summer fate. But the weather was looking a bit dodgy, and so I decided to make a plan B for if the weather did look terrible, where the stalls were going to go inside the school. Um so we already had a plan for that. Um, but obviously, this year I decided to keep our winter fair all inside so I didn't have to panic about the weather, which is so much easier. So that is my massive um list, my organization list, and I'll put a blank copy on my website in case you were looking for something as a starting point, and you could have a look at mine. Um I have developed it over a few years, and obviously it's very personal to me and the way I like to organise things, but you might find it handy if you're just starting out, or um, just sometimes it's just interesting, isn't it, to look at how other people organise things. So I'll uh I'll pop it on there. Okay, so you've heard how I put together my list of stalls. Now, the other thing I always do when I have a fate-styled event is I make a map of my event. Um, the map I know some people do share maps of events if they're spread over a wide area. Um, I haven't ever shared a map of one of my events um as as part of the event itself, um, just because our school's quite small and everything's quite close together, so people don't really need a map if you like. They can see one's from one side of the school to the other, so it's fine. But from the purposes of organising the event and laying everything out, I do draw myself a map. So I just draw the um playground or I draw the inside of the school, and then on a separate piece of paper, I write the name of the stall and I draw a tiny picture to represent the stall, and I cut all of those little pieces of paper out, stick a little bit of blue tack on the back, and I then position them on my map and try and get the best uh layout. Um, I try and think about how people are going to approach the event, how they're going to walk around the event, how far do we want the stores to be spread out? Um, all sorts of different things have to be considered. I really like doing it this way because it's so easy then to move um the stalls around and try different combinations. It's also really easy to take a photo of it and share it with the rest of your group and have other people make suggestions. Um so yeah, I will take a photo of this, put this on my website as well, so you can see my crazy style of organizing and my uh tiny little illustrations. I just try and you know include a bit of art and creativity in my everyday life, and this is a way that I can include it by drawing tiny little pictures of charm bracelets and uh raffle tickets and tombola prizes and things like that. So, um, but yeah, so armed with my map and my list of stalls um and my risk assessment, of course, you should always do a risk assessment. Those are my three main documents, if you like, for um an event which is like a fate. Of course, not every event needs a map, not every event needs a store list, but for these ones, I have those three things that I carry around with me the whole time, and um uh and yeah, I think those pieces of paper contain everything that I need and also all the bits of information that I might need to pass to somebody else as well. So we have tried something a little bit different uh with our fair this year. If you have listened to my episode about the rainbow run, which I think I called the event that all went wrong, um, you will know that because of terrible, terrible weather, we had to squash all of our stalls into the school hall for an hour. Um, and it was extremely busy and extremely squashed. I think we did have the cafe and something else in a separate classroom, but it was across the playground, really not ideal. Um, and we had to do that because obviously the classrooms being used during the day. This was an after-school event, so it takes you know a good half an hour to set up a cafe, um, and so we couldn't set it up in an adjoining classroom to the hall, we had to set it up in a classroom that wasn't being used. Um, and it was a good test. I think I did say in the episode, it was a great test to see what it was like to hold an event just in the school, and it was so squashed and so busy. Um, you couldn't really move around very easily. Um, it wasn't ideal to be honest, it was something that was unavoidable at the time, but now we are planning this event. I have taken that into consideration and decided to branch out from the school hall a little bit just to see how it goes. So a little bit fur uh so we have a little corridor that comes out of our hall and leads to um the school library. Now that corridor is actually quite wide, and I'm going to put a couple of stalls in that corridor, so they're just outside the hall, and I've decided to pick stalls that are not going to attract a crowd so that we don't have people lots of people blocking the corridor. So one of the stalls is going to be the collect your pre-ordered tea towel store because there's not going to be any browsing, there's not going to be lingering to play games and that sort of thing. People are going to go to it, collect their tea towels, and then leave. So I thought that would work quite well. Um, I haven't decided what the other one is yet. It might be the raffle just to catch people as they're moving around the school because the this corridor that I'm talking about leads to the school library, and I'm going to put a couple of stalls in the school library. Um, and in the school library, there's some really nice tables that have little puffy stools that slot underneath, and there's four stools for each table. So I'm going to use that area for making um bracelets because we would have an adult who's running the stall and sitting behind the table, and then we can have a number of children all at the stall at the same time with these lovely seats, and they push away under the table, so it's really good. Um, so that's felt like a really nice uh stall to have in the library. Also, it's not a messy stall, so there's no worry about you know the library getting messed up or the books being damaged or anything, because our library is quite new, so we have to take extra special care of it. Um, so yes, we've branched out to some stalls in the corridor and some stalls in the library, and then I do have access to the early years classroom, which is just a bit further down the corridor, where I'm hoping to put our secondhand bookstore because I didn't want that to go in the library. Can you imagine if the books got messed up? No, and we sold the wrong books, what a disaster. Um, so that's gonna go in uh the classroom, and I'm also going to put the glitter tattoos in that classroom because I know that the children really love glitter tattoos. So if I can put a a stall that I know the children will love in a slightly further away in a different part of the school, then it means people will go to it and it means they will then see the stalls next to that. Um, also, we can't get access to that classroom until the end of the day. Um, putting out books and putting out glitter tattoos is quite straightforward, so I thought that was going to be better, um, a better use of the stalls in that classroom. So uh I'll have to let you know how that goes. Again, something we haven't really tried. I'm hoping that people I'm hoping that because our school building is quite small, people will um roam into those other rooms um and not all just linger in the hall. I have made two very very big arrows which I'm intending to put on the wall just to point people down the corridor if they're not sure. Um, but I will try and spread the word and I'll put message on the parents' WhatsApp saying um, you know, we've got stalls in this classroom, we've got stalls in the library so that people are prepared and ready and understand it. So that is something different that we're trying this year. So I will let you know if that's gone well. Okay, just to finish off, I thought I'd just uh list the um stools that we've got confirmed for our winter fair. So we have 16 different things. Uh, so we have the winter cafe, which is going to be serving cake and hot drinks. So the hot drinks we've got are tea and coffee, we've got um hot chocolate and a spiced berry squash, which is the most delicious thing. It's made by the Bottle Green Company, it's actually um quite expensive, but absolutely delicious. It's a berry flavour, and then they've added in cinnamon, possibly mixed spice, I'm not really sure, but it kind of tastes like a very sweet mouled wine, all those same flavours, but obviously just in cordial form. So adults and children alike, I think, will really enjoy it. I certainly enjoy it. We have it here at home, and it's so nice in the winter to have it with hot water, um, just as an alternative to tea and coffee if you don't fancy that. Um I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about the hot chocolate. Obviously, not everybody can have hot chocolate because of the milk, and so offering a hot squash is a really good alternative. So I'm quite pleased that I feel like we've covered everybody with the drinks, so that's good. Um, and we don't tend to buy um fizzy drinks in cans or bottles or like um those little bottles of um squash, can't remember what they're called, find them everywhere, can't remember their name. Um, we don't tend to sell like pre-bottled drinks like that just because we're a really small school and they're quite expensive, so we tend to stick with squash that can be diluted because we just find it much more cost-effective, um, um, or water because quite a lot of children just want to have some water actually, so we we try and keep it simple. Then I have a parent who's running a chocolate fountain for us, which is very exciting. So she has made some kebabs up with some grapes, blueberries, and marshmallows on, um, and so the children can pick one of those and then stick it into the chocolate fountain um and enjoy it. So we'll see how that goes. We haven't tried this before, so it's nice to see something different. So those are our two food stalls. We've kept it really simple. We haven't done any uh savory food at all because our fare is running from about quarter past three till five o'clock. Um, so we just thought we'd keep it simple and people can go home and have their own dinner. Uh okay, so we're doing glitter tattoos again, always really, really popular. We're doing stamp your own gift wrap. So one of my PTA volunteers, um, her mum had lots of Christmas stamps that she didn't want anymore, so she's donated them to the PTA. And so my friend has bought lots of um brown, um, I think it's called craft wrapping paper that she's cut up into sections. She's bought some gift tags and she's bought some ink pads. So we're going to let the children design their own wrapping paper. Then we have some beads and some animal charms that were left over from our summer fate. Um, again, I know you don't know anything about that, I will be explaining that in a future episode. But uh, we are running a little store so they can use the beads and charms to make um a charm bracelet or a sort of tassel thing that you could hang off a bag like a keyring or um off your mobile phone or something like that. We have a store where you can collect your prepaid details. Uh, we have a raffle, so my friend has done an amazing job at getting about 10 raffle prizes for our raffle, and she's been pre-selling those in the playground um at pickup, and that's going really well. My son is going to be running a coin drop game. Now I've seen this on a website, it's where you have a large um uh fish tank, or in our case, a large plastic box because we don't have any fish, and I couldn't get a fish tank from anywhere. You fill it with quite a lot of water, it does get very heavy. Underneath the plastic box, which is like one of those mostly transparent boxes, you can place a picture. We're going to put a picture of Rudolph with a big red shiny nose on, and the idea is the children have to drop a coin into the water and see if they can land it on Rudolph's nose, um, which is a bit harder than you think because the water makes the coins move in strange directions. So it's just a fun game 50p for two or three goes or something, um, and you can get sweet if you have. Go and if you get a coin on Rudolph's nose, um, you can win a glow band. So I found loads of glow band bracelets in our PTA cupboard at school that must have been there for years, um, certainly before COVID, and we haven't used them since, so I thought perfect, we can have those as prizes, and I think the children will like that because our fair is after school, it's gonna be dark, so lots of fun there. Then we have an adult tombola where we're doing uh a pound for three tickets, and we're having zip number zero, number zero, um, and number five as the winning tickets, so it's not a prize every time, um, just kind of standard tomboler uh style. Then we have uh a children's tombola and we have a teddy tomboler, and because we had quite a lot of prizes for these, we have decided to run this as a one pound for one ticket, but you win every time because we definitely need to clear all those teddies off that table. Um, uh, so for all three of those tombolas, all of the items that we are giving as prizes were all donated. So if we sell out of our tombolas, which we have always done in the past, that those three stalls should bring in quite a lot of cash, which is good. Um, we have a blindfold drawing um competition. So I actually saw this at another fate and thought it was an amazing idea. Uh, so what you do is you have a blindfold and you have a piece of paper, you sit the put the blindfold around the child and they give them a pen or a pencil, and they have to draw, um, in our case a snowman on the piece of paper without looking. Um, they're going to pop their name on the back, and then we're going to hang up all the pictures as they're completed. Um, and then at the end of the fair, um, one of our teachers is going to pick a winner from each class. So at my school, we only have three classes, it's quite a small school. Um, so we're going to have a winner from each class and uh see who's managed to draw the best snowman without looking. So it's always quite an entertaining stall, and our um older children are actually going to run that store because they're great at helping the little ones, so that should be fun. Um, we're doing the classic um mix-your-own reindeer food. Uh, so for this one, I have purchased a number of different items. I've read a lot on the internet about not to put glitter, even something called edible glitter, in, because actually it's really bad for the environment and bad for uh small animals and birds. I've also read that you shouldn't put cheese in. I've also read um all sorts of actually very conflicting advice about what you can use in reindeer food. Um and reading all that stuff, I decided to keep it really simple. I decided that um to not I know it's so tempting to make it so magical and exciting for the children, but I also think that the whole thing is magical and exciting for them. We don't need to show, we don't need to kind of put a glitter in to make the reindeer fly or something. I don't know. I just thought, do you know, I'm just gonna stick with normal food. Um, because I did did cross my mind what if they try and eat any of it. So I put in the things that can be eaten by humans just in case. So we're going for oats, we're going for peanuts, we're going for we're not a nut-free school. I hasten to add, we're not a nut-free school, so peanuts is okay. We're going for like a wild bird seed mix and some black, um, I think they're black sunflower seeds, quite big seeds, can't remember what they're called, but anyway, um, they're black, so they add like a different colour and a different texture. Uh so we're just gonna have four things. Um, I'm going to give um that stall a bowl, a little bowl, a little plastic bowl, and and then I'm gonna put spoons in each of the bowls where the um oats and seeds are so the children can fill up their little bowl, and then their little bowl will get poured into a paper bag. And then I've got some pieces of paper already cut out as labels that they can write reindeer food on and they can stick it on their bag, and I've got some reindeer stickers they can put on their bag, so it's kind of like a craft as well as mixing your own reindeer food. And I thought, well, I because I know some PTAs pre-make their reindeer food, I've seen some pictures, um, which I think is nice as well, just to buy it. Um, but because our fare is a little bit smaller, I thought it would be nice to actually help the children choose, and they can choose a mixture of the things or just choose one thing. Anyway, we shall uh see how that goes. Then we have a game which is um the carrot game or the snowman noses game. So I've bought just bought a load of carrots from the supermarket. Uh, I think I've got 20 carrots, and I'm going to paint the end of I haven't actually worked out the proportion that I'm going to paint the end. Maybe five carrots, I'm going to paint gold or something like that. Then you hide them in a box of straw with the tops poking out, so you can't see the tips, the painted tips. Um, then the children pull out three, and if they pull out a painted one, they can win a little prize. So it's a really simple game. Um, and sometimes you just need these really easy games, don't you? So, no skill involved, basically, just pull out three carrots, easy peasy. Then we have um a squishmallow elf, because you know, squishmallows all the rage at the moment over here. Um, so we've got an elf, and we're doing guess the name of the elf, 50 p a guess. Um, we've got a whole list of names. We uh the lady organizing the store, she already asked a teacher to pick a name, so we've got that in a sealed envelope ready. Um, so that's a really easy game to play. And then our final stall is secondhand books because secondhand books always do well. Uh, you always get loads of donations from people as their children grow out of books. Um, we've got adult books as well, and everybody loves a rummage on the secondhand bookstore. You never know what you're gonna find on the secondhand bookstore, so that's something that we always have, and we just charge 50p for a book and try and sell as many as we can, really. So that is an overview of our entire event, which as I said is a week today, so I'm kind of feeling okay about it. I think the closer it gets to the time, the more anxious and worried and scared I feel. Um, but I am feeling quite excited and looking forward to it being busy and everybody coming and having a go and everything. Um, and look, I'm looking forward to the atmosphere as well, which should be nice and Christmassy. So uh I will update you in my next episode on how that has gone. And uh I wondered if you're right in the middle of your Christmas organisation at the moment. You probably are, you probably don't even have time to listen to this podcast, and you certainly probably don't have time to email me. But if you do get a chance to email me and tell me what you're up to, or tell me how you're feeling about this incredibly busy time of year, then I'll always be pleased to hear from you. So you can email me on hello at ptapodcast.com. So I'll catch you next time when I have got through the chaos that is the winter fair, and then it's just uh hurting towards Christmas with all my other things that I've been putting up organising because I'm organising the winter fair. Uh but that's the joy of the remote. So yeah, I'll uh catch you next time. Bye for now.