Colour Run and Sports Day

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. But 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 budgets, 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. As I mentioned in my last episode, my PTA is taking a break from any bigger events at the moment, so we're just focusing on the last day of this term, which is the um the Thursday just before the Easter holiday, and we're going to run an Easter egg hunt and a non-uniform day on the same day to keep it exciting for the children. And the non-uniform day we've picked this term is Crazy Hair Day, which always goes down really well with the kids, boys and girls. It was World Book Day yesterday, but uh we didn't have a presence at that this time. As you may know, if you have listened to other episodes, um last year I ran a story sweet shop, which I explained um how I did that in episode seven. So do have a listen to that if you want to find out more about it. It was really successful, um, but it did take quite a lot of planning, um, and we just couldn't fit that in uh this term. So we don't have an awful lot going on at the moment, and I thought that now would be the perfect time to tell you about our colour run, which we finally completed uh at our sports day last summer, last June. So I actually recorded this episode shortly after we did it, um, and I hope you enjoy listening to our first experience with a colour run and doing some fundraising on sports day too. I know that this time of year is often the time when people start planning what they're going to do in the summer term, so I thought that um airing this episode now would be um a great timing for anybody considering a colour run or doing some fundraising at Sports Day. So I hope you enjoy listening to my experience. I'm so pleased to be able to say that we finally held our colour run. If you remember, we had planned to hold this event in July 2022, but due to a few occurrences outside our control, we had to postpone till September 2022 and then eventually cancel in September 2022 due to bad weather. So, a full explanation on that event, which I christened the event that all went wrong. Um, I explained the whole thing, I think it's in episode six. So, if you want to go back and listen to that, you will hear my complete tail of woe as to why we planned for a colour run in July 2022, and we couldn't hold one. In fact, we held it in June 2023, which I'm about to tell you about now. Um, so now we have actually managed to hold it as an event. Um, I'm here to tell you that it was a huge success. The children absolutely loved it, and we got the best feedback we've ever had from parents who texted after the event, uh, which was just lovely and amazing, and you know, really kind of inflates your balloon when you're on the PTA and you don't get a lot of thank yous. A lot of lot of the time our PTA work goes kind of unnoticed in a way, so it's it's so special when when people do take the time to say thank you and notice what you've done. So I thought I would just compile everything we did about the colour run into this episode so that if you were thinking of running a colour run, then you can hear what we did. Now I do need to point out that um, as you know, if you're a regular listener to this podcast, my school is in fact a small village school. We only have about um I think it's 80 children, which covers um some nursery children up to year six, so it's very small um cohort of children and parents, and I know that um some schools are absolutely massive, like 600 kids. So the things that I'm going to say about how we ran our colour run might um not work if you're in a much bigger school. So I just wanted to remind you that my school is particularly small. So, as I mentioned before, we probably started planning this event back in I don't know April or May 2022, and the first decision we felt we had to make was how will the colour run um raise some money? So I having done some research on the internet, I felt that there were two options. We could either encourage the children to pay to enter to take part, or we could provide um free entry to all the children, but in instead encourage them to gather sponsorship. So if you're going down the pay to enter route, I think normally what people do is they have a cost per child that you would pay, say, say it was £10 or £5 or something to take part in the colour run. When when the child pays that money, you might choose to provide them with a t-shirt. A lot of people go for white t-shirts because the colour can really um stand out on that, or they or you might provide them with some sunglasses to wear, um, you might also include a medal in that price. Um, and I think some of the colour and paint companies also sell things like um fluorescent tutus and fluorescent accessories, like sweatbands, that sort of thing, that you can include to make it more exciting for the kids. So if you're choosing to go down the um paid entry format, I think you have to possibly provide something to counteract that um payment that the child is going to make. Um, so that's how people do their pay-to-enter route, and the sponsorship route is where um you choose to make the entry free so any child can take part, regardless of whether they've raised sponsorship or not. Um, but obviously you would encourage them to raise some sponsorship, and um, if you are asking the children to be sponsored, make it clear what people will be sponsoring them for. So, as I've already mentioned, um we chose to do the sponsorship route because we felt that we didn't want to um isolate or I don't know, prev basically prevent any child from taking part. We wanted all the children to come along and have fun, and we thought the best way of doing that was to have it free for every child, and we hoped that most children would raise at least £10 of sponsorship, and that's kind of what we based our figures on to start with. Um, and we decided to make the goal to for the children to collect um seven different colours on their t-shirt, and if they had run around enough times and they've got seven colours on, then they've achieved their goal and they can receive their medal. We didn't purchase the medals, we decided to. Well, I have a very creative person on my PTA team, and she decided that she could make the medals and um rifled through the school's stock cupboard, which is just full of loads of ribbons and fairy things and um you know jewels, I don't know, whatever, loads and loads of crafty stuff. So so she had a look through there and picked out some things and then um made um 80 medals, which is very impressive with with her family. So we got that sorted, and um I love the fact that we kind of used materials that we already had, so we didn't have to pay extra for any medals, which was great. And the way that we actually chose to run it was um we decided to have it on our school field, so where our school is situated, we have the school buildings and a big playground, and then we have our school field on the same site, so it's all together. So we decided that the children would run laps around the school field, so it's quite large, especially for the little ones. I wasn't really sure how many laps they were going to need to do. Um, when we have our sports day long distance races, they do two laps of the school field, which seems to be quite a long way, judging by some of the red faces that run round past you. Uh, so I kind of thought, well, if it's two laps, then that's probably plenty. And we decided to split the children into um key stage one plus nursery, any little ones in that group, and then key stage two to make sure that the school field didn't get crowded, and to make sure obviously that the bigger ones didn't bump into the little ones and just keep it safe for everybody. Uh, the other the other thing we decided on was to have a water pistol area. So, again, in the research that I did online, I read from quite a few people that if your t-shirt is a bit damp, that is much better for when somebody's throwing the powder at you for the powder to stick onto your t-shirt. Uh, so I thought it'd be really fun, and I thought the kids would love it if they um water pistoled each other. So while key stage two were running round, key stage one could shoot them with water pistols, and then when they swapped over, they would just um shoot each other. I was uh a little bit nervous about how this would go, but actually it was fine, and the the children shooting the water pistols had just as much fun, possibly more fun, than it when they were running collecting the powder on their t-shirts. So it was really nice that we had two activities for the children to take part in. And for the water pistols, we did not purchase any water pistols, we just said in our information to parents, um, it's optional, but if your child would like to bring a water pistol to to wet the other children, then they'd be more than welcome to. So we just kind of let parents be in charge of that, and it seemed to work absolutely fine. So the next challenge, um, once we'd worked out roughly how we were going to do it, was to decide how much powder to buy. Um again I looked online, found it a little bit confusing, so I decided to ring one of the paint companies to find out. But I had a very strange circular conversation um with one of the people on the phone, which didn't really help me, so he was saying, I was saying, Oh, I've got this many children, I think we're gonna do some laps around the school field. How many, how much powder do you think I need? Um, and he he just kept replying, saying, Well, it depends how much powder you want to throw. And I said, Yes, well, I I know, but I'm not sure how much throwing I want to do, it depends on the amount of powder I get. Um, and we couldn't, I just felt like we we couldn't really get to the answer. I'm not really sure what happened. Anyway, um I came off the phone feeling none the wiser, so I decided to do some estimating on my own, and I went to the kitchen and grabbed a handful of flour and weighed it, um, and then tried to estimate how many handfuls were going to be thrown at each child. So they had seven colours to get on a t-shirt, and I kind of estimated um maybe ten handfuls um would do it. Um obviously, if some missed, wasn't really sure how it was gonna work because I'd never been to a colour on C my problem here. Um, and I made a spreadsheet to try and work out exactly how much powder to get. So in the end, um we ordered five kilos of each colour. So we had seven colours, five kilos of each colour, and the total cost was about £250, I think. So it's quite a big expense. Um, and at the time it was a total still a total guess as to whether we got the right amount or not. It's very hard to tell by looking. I remember when the boxes arrived, opening the boxes and just looking at the bags of powder, and you just think, I just I just don't know if this is enough for me. I just had no idea. I had to just go with it and and trust that it was the right amount. Um, what we did do though to make sure that the children had an equal amount of powder thrown at them is we split the powder um into one-third and two-thirds of each colour because our key stage one group was about two-thirds of the school, and our key stage two group was about a third of the school, so I split the powder accordingly so that we didn't use up all the powder throwing at key stage one and not having enough left to throw it at key stage two. So if you're in a similar situation, I would maybe recommend thinking about doing that because it meant that when we got to the second group of children, I wasn't looking at some empty buckets thinking, oh no, we haven't got enough. So I was I was really pleased that we took that approach. Um, and so once we got the powder, we just need to decide how it was actually going to work on the day. So, as I said, the children were going to do laps around the school field, and we had seven colours to get on their t-shirts. So I thought probably best if we have four colour throwing stations that they have to run through. Um, obviously, we needed a start line and a finish line. Um, so on the finish line would be a table with medals, and then we needed an area that the children run through with all the water pistols. So, what we did was we had the start line, um, and then the children ran straight away through the kind of gauntlet of water pistols in a straight line, and then they bend bent around the corner, and then they started to run through the colour throwing stations. So, all they were were just a group of parents standing either side of the track with um their coloured powder, and the children would run down the middle, and the parents would try and throw the powder on the children. So, having four colour throwing stations, um, a finished table with the medals and the water pistols meant that we needed a lot of volunteers. So, my advice to you is don't underestimate the amount of volunteers that you need, especially throwing the powder, because the children, while they want to get coloured powder on them, they are also running, so sometimes you might miss them, and then when you bend down to you know fill up your scoop again, loads of children run past, and again you've missed them. So, um, do try and get as many volunteers as you can. I know finding volunteers for PTA things is really difficult, but you just got to try your best. Um, we also had to determine how to throw the powder on the children. Again, did quite a lot of research on the internet, and the method that we decided on was so when our when our powder arrived, it arrived all in plastic bags, sealed plastic bags. So I basically as a PTA team we just brought in loads of garden buckets, garden plastic containers, um, and we poured the powder into those buckets, and then we um approached I think it was Costa Coffee or one of the coffee um uh chain companies and just asked for some cups and uh got them for free, and so we used the cups as the scoops into the bucket. The cups had the powder in, and we just found that that was a really easy way of flicking the powder over the children, um, and it worked worked absolutely fine. So, so that was good. Uh, the volunteers do get quite covered in powder, so you might want to take that into account if they ask you. Um, so for the volunteers, actually, I took a slightly different approach this time. Instead of getting lots of volunteers in advance, I decided to have a go at just grabbing volunteers on the day. I did obviously mention to parents that we would need volunteers, but I didn't get anyone to sort of sign up or anything. I just thought, do you know what? So many people do this approach where they just ask people on the day and get a really good response. So I'm gonna try it. So when it was time to set up for the colour run, this was after sports day, I just very bravely, because I don't actually really enjoy doing this, but I had just had to go along the line of where all the parents were sitting and just sort of shout out, you know, we need people to throw powder, please come over and help us. And we must have got about maybe 15-20 volunteers, maybe not 20, maybe just 15, which wasn't quite enough. And I did go back and tried to get some more, but nobody else wanted to wanted to volunteer, so we just had to go with what we got. But people did step up, and I think sometimes when people can see an event happening right in front of them, and perhaps if they can see there's not enough volunteers, maybe that really helps people to say yes. So um, yeah, that that was a slightly risky approach, but it did pay off for me this time. And the final thing I probably need to mention about the colour run is the risk assessment. So, as you know, um I've spoken about this in a previous episode for any PTA event, really, you need to do a risk assessment which you can share with the school so everybody knows how to keep everybody else safe and free from harm. So I used a risk assessment that I'd made previously, and obviously I went through it to check it was um accurate for this event. And I was expecting to have to write down lots and lots of things for the colour run, but in the end, the only extra thing I added in specific to the colour run was um if the children got any powder in their eyes, um, which came down to us asking um the parents to provide eye protection. So we decided that we were going to put the emphasis on the parents providing the eye protection. So we made it very clear in everything we sent out about the colour run, you must provide goggles for your children, or at least sunglasses, ideally goggles because they protect the whole eye. Obviously, the powder can slip behind sunglasses. Um, and uh so yes, so that was my minimizing risk on the risk assessment for powder going in eyes. So if powder had gone in eyes, we just made sure there was an eye washing station, and we obviously had to first aid it for the whole event anyway. So we just made sure that person was aware. And when it was time to start the colour run, I quickly went round the four colour throwing stations, and I just gathered the volunteers and just said, look, we want to aim to throw the colour on the children's t-shirts, I don't want it going in their face or over their head or anything. Um, so I made sure I told everybody, but then I then I did see whilst the colour was happening, a few um shall we say, overenthusiastic parents who were tipping cupfuls of colour powder directly on top of children's heads, which is not what I said at all. And I was watching it happening thinking, oh gosh, well, there's nothing I can really do about this. Um, and obviously, I took my responsibility and I told them about it, so I kind of felt like I'd fulfilled my um my safety responsibility there. Uh, and you know, those those parents had definitely heard what I said. So, what can you do? Hey, what can you do? Um, we did have some spare goggles just in case any children forgot, but I don't think any child did, so that was really fantastic. So that is really a summary of the event all organized. Um, and then as you know, we couldn't actually run it because of COVID, and then we got a new date, then Her Majesty the Queen sadly passed away, so we had to postpone again, and then on the third date, the a terrible storm came in, so we had to cancel it for a third time, uh, which is all the stuff that I talk about in um episode six. So, if you want all the gory details, have a listen to to my tale of woe there. So, what we decided to do, um, because it was supposed to happen in September 2022, and we couldn't do it, we then basically had to wait a whole year and Nearly a whole year for some good weather because to run a colour run, you really do need quite specific weather conditions, which I only kind of realised um after we'd cancelled it for the third time. But you need ideally, you need obviously a sunny day, or let's put it a different way, a non-rainy day. Should we say that cloudy is fine, sunny is good. Uh, but most importantly, I think you need a low wind, because otherwise, this very fine powder, and it's kind of if you haven't felt it before, it's a bit like talcum powder. I think the powder we bought is actually um made of corn flour with with a colour applied to it, so it's very, very fine. So when you throw it out from the cups, it will catch in the wind and it will blow away. So um I know that nobody can predict the weather, but if you're thinking about you know when in the in the year to hold it, then um summer generally has less wind than autumn winter. So um, yeah, I think the wind and the rain are definitely to be avoided. So we decided that really our only option was to have it in the summer term, and we decided to tag the colour run on to the end of our sports day. I was a little bit worried, it was a bit of a gamble because obviously, normally when I pick my children up from sports day, they are absolutely exhausted having done loads of racing and loads of running and loads of cheering and everything throughout the whole day. So I did think, oh my goodness, would will the children and the adults actually be too tired to really enjoy a colour run at the end of sports day? And will everybody want to stay on for an extra, I don't know, 45 minutes after the end of the school day? Will they just be too tired? But the answer of course was no, definitely not too tired. The children suddenly had an had a rush of energy that I don't think any of us expected them to still have after a day of sports sports day, so it was absolutely fine to tag this little mini colour run onto the end of sports day, it worked really well for us. Sports Day at my primary school is a really lovely event. Um, parents are encouraged to come along from about 11 o'clock and stay until the end of the day. Um, they're encouraged to bring a picnic which they share with their children on a picnic rug on the school field and just enjoy watching the racing and doing lots of cheering and having some social time with each other. It's a holiday event, we've got music playing, the teachers have a race, the parents have a race, younger siblings have a race, and it's always been just a lovely atmosphere. Um, and so we thought um it might sound strange, but this is the first time we've actually done anything as a PTA at Sports Day before. Um, and as chair, I was quite keen to make sure that my team um didn't miss out on watching their children because because they would be volunteering, so we thought really carefully about a few different scenarios of what we could offer or organise on Sports Day. The other thing with our Sports Day is it's a whole day event, but it's a jam-packed whole day event. There isn't a lot of downtime for people to maybe wander off and buy something at a stall or something, it doesn't really work like that. Um, the free time is at lunchtime, and that's kind of it, and then the rest of the day is taken up with individual races and team races. So the first thing we decided to do, which we have never done before, is that we booked a local coffee van to come to Sports Day. So we were thinking what we can offer the parents, and obviously that would be hot drinks. Um, and we decided that our offering of instant coffee and just a cup of tea, really isn't gonna hit the spot. Um, I'm not really a coffee connoisseur myself, but other people on my PTA team suggested that we have a look at uh coffee vans, so we did, and we found a local guy, and he was very enthusiastic about coming. I did take great pains to explain to him we're a small school, because I wasn't really sure how much coffee people would order. I was a little bit worried about him coming along and not being able to sell very much. Um so I did, you know, try and say, you know, I'm not really sure how it's gonna go, I've never done it before, but he was perfectly happy to come along and try it, and um we managed to negotiate him um giving us 15% of the profits that he made on the day, which was really great. So he came about uh 11 o'clock and he parked up his coffee van in the school car park, uh sorry, the school playground, uh, because we don't have a school car park, and he left about 4:30, so he was there from 11 till 4:30, and he had a solid queue for the entire day. Every time I looked over at his van, there was a queue. He was just him on his own. Um, but he had this constant queue and his menu was amazing. He had a huge selection of coffees, plus all the different um syrups and loads of different types of milk as well. Then he had a few different teas, but he also had he could do um smoothies, he could do uh oh, I want to say frappuccinos, uh frappé, you know, frappe iced coffees, that's it, iced coffees and iced drinks, um uh and just sort of cans of bottles of stuff. So he had a huge um range to offer, which was absolutely fantastic, because the other thing we were thinking of, oh I wonder if we could make slushies or something, but after doing quite a lot of research on that, turns out that that's just not an option for us without a slushy machine, and slushy machines are very expensive, but to have him be able to come and offer things like that when we didn't have to do anything was brilliant. Um, so that was great because we as a PTA team didn't then have to worry about making hot drinks and standing behind a table all day and missing out on watching our own children take part. So I would heartily recommend uh a coffee van if you can find one in your area. Um so we actually made £60 uh from him, which was pretty good because I think if we had sold tea and coffee ourselves, there's no way we would have made £60. So that was great. We also sold ice creams uh which were donated to us, we sold cakes which the parents brought as donations, and we also sold some raffle tickets for our big summer raffle, which I will talk about in another episode. But we took the opportunity to sell those raffle tickets to parents at sports day. Um so we kept it pretty simple. The cakes didn't sell very well, I have to be honest. I think the ice creams definitely sold well. We were lucky it was a nice hot day for sports day this year, it hasn't always been in the past, but it was this year. The cakes didn't sell particularly well. I think it's because parents uh because they bring a picnic to share with their children, they probably brought food with them, and then people perhaps just chose ice creams over cakes. So whether we would do cakes again, I'm not sure, possibly just stick with ice creams next time. But yes, the coffee van was a huge success, and I think keeping it simple on the day was also really nice for us as volunteers. And then it all finished off with the colour run, it was just wonderful. The children absolutely loved it, they loved squirting their friends with their water pistols, and then they loved running around trying to get covered in the coloured powder, and I did manage to take a step back and just have a look around the school field, and it I just felt I could see so much joy happening right then. The parents watching their children and the children taking part. It was oh it was just brilliant. Uh, most of the time I was running around refilling buckets with powder. Um, as I said, I didn't quite have enough volunteers throwing it, but we did manage, and many children ran around many more laps than they needed because they were just having so much fun, and then they all enjoyed receiving their medals at the end. Um, and the medals looked absolutely great. My friend had done such a great job on those. One thing I do want to tell you is that the children were completely covered in paint powder. I think I said um that I've never been to a colour run before, so I wasn't really expecting them to get completely covered because we were supposed to be just aiming for their t-shirts, but of course um things get out of hand, and I guess you can't really accurately aim coloured powder onto a child. So they did get a lot more covered than I was expecting, but none of them seemed to mind, and none of the parents seemed to mind. Nobody complained, all of it was fine. The colour powder did wash out of the t-shirts, um, but if you if you leave the coloured powder on the t-shirt and you don't wash it for a couple of days, then it can stain. So nobody complained, but I did hear a couple of people say, Oh, mine didn't mine didn't quite wash out. So, little tip there, if you wanted to pass that on to anybody, do wash your t-shirt straight away. But it was such a fantastic end to our sports day. And then when I finally got home, I saw messages on our parents' WhatsApp group uh thanking the PTA for such an amazing event. Do you know it's the first time we've ever had such a positive reaction from parents and they've actually taken the time to say thank you. So let me just read you um some of the messages. So someone said, Hi, you did an awesome job today, the kids adored it, thanks for all of your hard work. Someone said it was so lovely to see the children so happy. Someone else couldn't agree more, it was so fun, thank you for organizing. Um said, Yeah, very uh thanks very much, it was very fun. A wet cloth worked wonders on trainers, so that's another top tip. Um, somebody said, My son said the colour run was the most exhilarating thing I've ever done. Someone else, a brilliant day all round, and an excellent finish to the day. Best sports day ever. Thank you so much for organising it. Um they just said, oh like wonderful afternoon, thanks to all the organisers, you did a fantastic job. And it was just so lovely, you know, to come back from a day where you've worked quite hard and put in a lot of effort, and it you know, it's taken a whole year to get to the point where we can actually do the colour run, and then to have reaction from parents like that was really the icing on the cake, and such a wonderful thing to read when when you got home. We've never we've run lots of events and we've had our school WhatsApp group for quite a few years, and we've never had parents before saying thank you on it. So that was that was just really lovely. So, would I do a colour run again? Yes, I would do a colour run again. Once you've done it once, you iron out all those little problems um about how to throw the powder, how many volunteers you need, what it actually what actually happens at it. Yes, I would do it again, and yes, I probably would tag it on to the end of sports day again, just because it was a lovely way to end sports day, um, and you you know you could make it an annual tradition. Um, we did spend I think it was £250 on the powder. When we got the sponsorship money, we'd actually received £661 in sponsorship, so that that definitely covered the cost of the powder. Um, I don't know if we would always get the children to be sponsored if we tagged the colour run on the end of sports day, if we just did it as like a gift from the PTA. I'm not really sure about that, we'd we'd have to discuss that um in my PTA, but um but yes, um if you're thinking of doing a colour run, I would say go for it. Uh everybody enjoyed it, you get some fabulous photos because it's all so colourful. The children love it, and it's just such a fun event to take part in. And there you go, those were my experiences on holding our first colour run and doing a little bit of fundraising on Sports Day. Have you held a colour run before? Do you have any extra top tips that you would like to share? Perhaps you have a much larger primary school than mine. How did you make it work at your school? I would love to hear about your experiences, so do drop me a line on hello at ptapodcast.com. We haven't planned our summer terms just yet, but I've already booked the coffee van to come back to our sports day as it was so popular with teachers and parents and the children who were ordering smoothies via their parents. Um do you have any other fundraising at your sports day? I think having tried a couple of things at ours, we don't really have time to fit anything else in apart from something like a coffee van, as the programme of um sporting activities is quite jam-packed throughout the day to be honest. Um, it's very busy, so I think we're just for now, I think we're just gonna stick with that coffee van. So as always, good luck with whatever your PTA is working on at the moment. Keep in touch, and I will see you next time. Bye for now.