10 easy stall ideas using A4 paper

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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. Yes, it is summer fair or fate season or summer event. So you might be halfway through planning your um event for the next term, or perhaps it's already on the horizon, or I think some people may already have had theirs in early May. So I've organised quite a few fates in my time as chair, and I know exactly how stressful and time-consuming, in fact, all-consuming, they can be. So this episode I thought I would share some ideas for stalls at a fate which you could put together very easily at the last minute to take away a little bit of that stress. I can't promise it will take away all the stress, but it might make a few things a bit easier. And they all centre, all these ideas centre around a plain piece of white A4 paper, which I know everybody has access to. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to describe how the stall works, give you a kit list to get everything together that you might need, suggest whether you need any prizes, and give an indication of who could run the stall. And if you um try them before me, please do let me know how you get on. Drop me an email, it's hello at ptapodcast.com, and I would love to hear how you did and if you have any tips to share with anybody else. So let's not dilly-dally, let's get started, and I'll tell you about the first one. So the first idea is the blindfold drawing stall. Now I've talked about this before, and I have tried this one, and I can say it has been extremely successful. So it's incredibly easy. You basically run a stall where your customer comes along and they have a blank piece of paper in front of them, and they have to wear a blindfold. So you could either use one of those uh sort of nighttime blindfolds like the ones you get on aeroplanes that you can just pop on over a child's head or tie a little scarf around their head or something. Not all children will be happy, obviously, wearing a blindfold, so they can just close their eyes, that's absolutely fine. And then they pick up their pencil and they draw without looking the shape or the picture that you want them to draw. They write their name on the back of the paper, then you hang it up in your display of all the drawings that have happened so that everybody can see uh what's been going on. So when they come along to the store, they will you can actually display a picture of what you want them to draw. So, for example, at the uh winter fair that we organized last year, we wanted everybody to draw a snowman, so it's quite a simple shape in reality. So we drew a picture of a snowman in black felt tip so that it was very clear what the children were kind of aiming for. So just in case somebody wasn't sure what a snowman looks like or how to draw it, we had an example there because I guess the children and um possibly nursery and reception might not know how to do that. So you have a little um example picture, then you put the blindfold on the child, you they have a go at drawing it, write their name on the back and hang it up in your display. Then at the end of the fate or the event, um you get somebody to come along and judge the drawings. So you do need to decide in advance on what your category is going to be. So for mine, we just did um key stage one key or key stage two, and actually, we also had an adult category because quite a few adults wanted to take part, and I think a couple of our teachers took part as well, which the children found hilarious. So all I had to do then was to organise prizes just for those categories. So we have three categories. In fact, I don't think I did an adult prize, I think I just did prizes for the kids, and I bought a little um Christmas activity book from the works, something like that, uh, for a couple of pounds. So it wasn't a prize every time, it was just prizes at the end, which also made it easier. Um, and basically that's how it works, it's really, really straightforward. So the kit that you require to run a blindfold drawing store is obviously a stack of plain A4 paper for the kids to draw on, pencils, probably some pencil sharpeners, and a blindfold, whether that's a ready-made blindfold or a scarf or something. Um we also wanted to display our pictures, so we brought in some string that we tied up to use as like a washing line, and I brought in my bag of pegs from home so that we could peg up the drawings as they uh were completed, and then you also need somebody willing to be the judge at the end. So we picked our head teacher because she was already going to be drawing the raffle, so we just thought she could judge the pictures as well. Uh so I've already talked about prizes. I think you do need prizes for this one, but as I said, you don't need a prize for every time somebody has a go, you can do prizes at the end, so decide on as many categories as you want, which will obviously depend on how big your school is. If you're a particularly large school, you might want to do one prize per year group, possibly if you have a lot of children. Um, as I said, mine's a small school, so we could split into key stage one and key stage two, and again, the prize was um just one prize for that category and not a very expensive prize, so it was okay. Who can run the stall? Well, we ran our stall with the year five and six children in charge, and it worked extremely well. They were absolutely fantastic at encouraging the little ones, at using the blindfold, um putting up the pictures, making sure there were names on them. They did a fantastic job, so you could definitely hand this over to year five or six children if you didn't have an adult volunteer. The other good thing about this stall, the blindfold drawing, is it's very easy to bend to the theme of your fate. So, for example, at our winter fair, we obviously did a snowman. If you have a summer fair, you could do an ice cream or an ice lolly, or um, at our festival of nature that we ran last year, we did a flower or a butterfly. So anything that's quite a simple shape works particularly well for this store, and for this one we charge just 50p for one go. Obviously, you could have as many goes as you wanted, but just 50p for one go. So that is the blindfold drawing store. And next on my list is the paper aeroplane store. So this is quite an interesting one because there are a couple of variations on how you could run this store. So basically, you your customer comes up, pays some money to have a go, and they have to fold a paper aeroplane using A4 Paper. So, again, it might be good to have some examples on the table, and you need to make sure that the stall holder or or the children behind the stall know how to fold a simple paper airplane. Now, as you may or may not know, there are many different ways to fold a paper airplane, and some people do have their preferred method. So you just need to make sure that the people behind the store can demonstrate at least one method of folding a paper airplane in case uh your customer is not sure. When they've folded their paper aeroplane, there are a couple of different ways you can uh use this stall. So, one of the things you can do is to have running as a competition, in fact, all of these are competitions actually. Um, the first type of competition to run is how far their aeroplane will fly. So you can once they've folded their aeroplane, they can come to a start line if you like, throw their aeroplane, and then you can measure in distance how far the airplane has travelled, and you can have some markers in the ground so that other customers that come up can see, you know, what the winning one is, or like the top three or something, so that you know. So at the end of the event, you could award prizes to the top three um distances. Another way of running it as a competition, or in addition to that one, actually, is to have the best designed paper airplane. So this is where people who fold airplanes in a different way might like to show off their skills, um, or you could decorate your aeroplane with um coloured pencils and stickers and things like that. So you could have um how far your airplane can fly, but also the best designed aeroplane, whether that's by folding or by um decorating, which I think those things would then cover a lot of different skills that your children would have. And the other way you could run the stall is for um your customer to come and fold paper aeroplane with a sheet of A4 paper, and then you could design an obstacle course for them to use their paper aeroplane on. So obviously, if you did take this route, this is a little bit more involved than just turning it with a wadge of um A4 paper on the day. So the type of obstacles you could do are some you could lay down some hula hoops on the ground and they have to try and fly their paper aeroplane into the hula hoops. You could put I'm not sure how you would do this, but just as an idea, you could put some hoops up like um on poles, so they have to fly their paper aeroplane through the hoop. You could um put some like some um hurdles or something like that, so they have to fly their paper aeroplane either over the hurdle or underneath the hurdle. Have a look in your P shed and see what you can find. Um, don't know if you could do a slalom with a paper airplane. I'm sure there's loads of things you could have a go at, and I think the children would really love to try and see if their aeroplane can make it through the obstacle course. So if you wanted to run uh the paper aeroplane store, the kit that you need is some A4 paper. You could go for coloured A4 paper, it doesn't have to be white. Um, go for some coloured pens, pencils, stickers, embellishments, anything like that that the children can use to personalise their aeroplane. You might like to write out some instructions on how to fold the basic shape and have some examples ready. Um you may also need to spend a little bit of time briefing your volunteer who's going to stand behind the store so they uh feel confident in demonstrating how to fold uh the paper aeroplane. If you wanted to run it as a competition with how far you can throw your aeroplane, obviously you'll need a measuring tape so that you can record the distances. Um and if you wanted to do it as an obstacle course, you will need to find some obstacles and lay out the course, which obviously requires a bit of prep beforehand. You may also like to add in a fastest person to complete the obstacle course, so you might need a timer as well. So there are a few ways you could extend the paper aeroplane store if you wanted to. And in terms of prizes, again, as with the blindfold drawing, I think it's a good idea here to pick your prize category in advance and just purchase um some small prizes for those categories. You don't need to give a prize for everybody that's made a paper aeroplane, you could just pick like top three distances, um best designs from each year group or a key stage one, a key stage two, that kind of thing. So the prizes are a little bit more straightforward here. Who can run the stall? I think uh year five and six would be absolutely fine running this stall. It might be that you might want an adult to assist, um, especially if they're do if they're measuring distances, just so if it's a competition, you can be sure that it's been done accurately and fairly. And also having an adult who understands how to fold a paper aeroplane might be really helpful, and they might be great at also helping the kids. Uh, in terms of charging for this stall, um, I would probably just do it as a 50p stall, um, just because you're folding a piece of paper, aren't you? So it's not very difficult to set up, and uh, I think my kids would love having a go at that one. Idea number three is again a folding uh type of uh folding paper stall, and this is the origami fortune teller. So I haven't actually run this as a store, but I have made these at home, and I can assure you that they're very very easy to fold up. Um, so I think running a stall like this would be very straightforward. So I'm talking about the origami fortune tellers that you can fold from a sheet of AFL paper. Um I'm gonna try my best to describe them, but what I will do is I'll put a photo um on my website so you can be definitely sure what I'm talking about because I do actually find these quite difficult to describe um without demonstrating them. So they are a little um a little oh gosh, a little game I suppose that's that's folded out of paper, and you put your thumb from both hands, you put your thumb and your forefinger in into the folds on it, and then you can move the paper in and out as you play the game. So you have generally have something written on the outside, and you ask your friend to pick one of the options, and then you spell that word or count that number aloud as you're moving the uh fortune teller in and out, and then that reveals the inside of the fortune teller, and then your friend can pick an option from the inside, and you count that out again, and then they pick another option, and then you open the little flap where their option is and read out their fortune or the message that's indicated under the flap. So um it's just a bit of fun, really, and there's loads of um different um things you can put on them. Um uh so and it's a fun thing for a child to do with a friend, that kind of thing. So um, so the idea behind this stall is that your customer comes up, um, you show them how to fold the fortune teller, which is very easy, it only takes about six or seven steps of folding, and then the fortune teller is ready to be decorated and for you for them to write their messages on. So, for this stall, you just require a for paper. You could go for coloured paper or white paper, um, then you need some coloured pens or pencils, stickers, other embellishments because it's always fun to add things on to um uh as add decorations on, and you may also like to have some written instructions on the stall just in case the person behind the stall forgets how to do it or um there's a massive cue, and so an adult might be able to help a child. Um I think that uh you don't need any prizes for this stall because the prize is the fortune teller that obviously you can take away. And if we're thinking about who can run the stall, well, I think this would be absolutely fine being run by a year five or six because the folding is really straightforward. Um, but you could also have an adult supervising, um, and I think it would be really helpful to have some examples on the table of ones that have been folded, and then some examples of things you could write on your origami fortune teller. Now, I have actually got a book here at home, which is a whole book of tear-off sheets to fold origami fortune tellers, which I bought from um Wall Stones, and it's actually published by Osborne Books, so it has a whole massive stack of uh fortune tellers. So, in the first half of the book, they are ready written for you. So, for example, I have one here that's um has loads of jungle pictures on. So the choices on the outside are things like orchid, vines, water lily, and banana tree. Then the choices on the inside are just numbers one to eight, and then when you lift the flaps up, you have to do different activities like roar like a tiger, hop like a frog, hiss like a snake, stay very still like a sloth, that kind of thing. So it's all sort of jungle themed. Um I've got oh this is a good one. This is a Halloween one, where you can choose ghost, skeleton, monster, or mummy, and then the numbers one to eight, and then under the flaps it says things like watch out, there's a ghost in your mirror, or don't drink a magic potion, or you'll enjoy eyeballs for dinner, that kind of thing. So you can theme them to whatever you like. And then at the back of this book, there are loads of blank ones that are lovely, really nicely decorated, and you can just write your own ideas in. And do you know, in fact, let me just have a look. This book has eight tea fortune tellers in, so about half of them are completed, and and the other half are to be completed. So there's eight tea fortune tellers in this book, and this book costs um nine pounds. So you could even just buy this book of fortune tellers which are already uh beautifully decorated, and so eight tea fortune tellers, so that's gonna be about 10p per fortune teller. Um, and if you charge 50p to come and make a fortune teller, then that's you know quite a good profit there of 40p per child. So if you didn't want to um spend ages uh helping children decorate their fortune tellers, you can actually buy a pad uh from this book and it's already done for you. Um what I'll do is I'll put a link to this book in the show notes so that you can see it, and that will also show you what the fortune tellers look like because I don't think I described them very well at all. They're very hard to describe, they're very hard. Um, but I thought making an origami fortune teller as a stall out of fate would be fun, it's popular and very easy to do, so I think it would work really well. Right, and idea number four for a stall using just a four paper is to run a design competition. Now I haven't run this one before, but obviously it's very straightforward. So you basically have your child come to the store, um you have a design brief, so you have to tell them what they've got to design. They do their design on the A4 paper, and then you pin it up somewhere, display it somewhere behind the stall so that other people at the event can come and see all the lovely pictures. Again, this is a very easy one to fit to a theme, and you could run this as a genuine competition. So, for example, if you wanted to uh I don't know, design a logo for your PTA or design a sign for a new classroom at school or um design gosh I don't know a um a special garden at school or something like that. If you genuine genuinely had something that you wanted the children to design, you could run this as a real competition and and the winner you know would actually get their design made. Or you could have it as a sort of pretend competition and maybe say something along the lines of oh designer machines get you out of bed in the morning or something like that and just see what the children come up with. So if you did have a themed event, obviously you could pick a um uh an idea connected to that theme for the children to design something. So this is quite a good one to fit in with whatever your event is. Very straightforward. All you need the kit required is a four paper, a selection of pencils, rubbers, sharpeners, crayons, that kind of thing. Um, probably some way of displaying the pictures. I always like to go for something like a washing line with pegs because it's really easy to tie string from one place to another place, but you might have some display boards possibly at your school that you could use. Um it just depends, I guess, where the stall is and uh what the what the weather's like, probably. Um, you also need to have the design brief, so the design instructions so that the children can be clear about what they're having to do, and then if you're running it as a competition, you obviously need to have a judge. So, do you need prizes? Well, probably yes, if you're having a competition, you do need prizes. So, again, decide on your categories in advance and sort out your prizes, um, or perhaps you might just have one winner for this particular competition. That's entirely up to you. And I think for this one, I would suggest probably um an adult would be best to stand behind the store just to help the children stick to the design brief and try and encourage them, maybe help them with some ideas or something like that. So I think an adult would be uh great to run this stall. But yes, if you had anything you needed to get designed, maybe run it as a stall as a competition and see what the children come up with because they always have really excellent imaginative ideas, so it's really fun to see what they can create. The next idea that I had is very very straightforward, and that would be an art gallery or just a colouring station. So I haven't actually run an art gallery before, but we have done a colouring station at various fates, and I think we just had those for free so children could come along. We had uh some pre-printed pictures that they could colour in that you know related to the event we were having. Some children just love colouring and they can spend hours and hours colouring, and um, it's a nice quiet place, possibly for children that might just need a bit of space, a bit of a sit-down, um, also good for the adults if they want to have a bit of a sit-down. If their child is colouring, that's a great opportunity for a cup of tea. So, um, so at this stall, you could possibly run this uh for free, but basically, I thought it would be really lovely if you could create uh an art gallery at your event so the children could come along and draw anything they like on their piece of paper, and then you could pin it up and form an art, a growing art gallery that kind of evolves with the event. I think would look really fantastic. So, really simple. This one, um, the kit required would be obviously A4 paper, um, art materials, possibly paint, um possibly that one might work. Uh, it's always tricky, isn't it, if you introduce paint or kind of wet things at events that need drying time, but you might be alright with this one. Um, if if you wanted to do colouring, then it's quite handy to have some colouring printouts ready, so you can just Google those and print them off. Uh, again, some way of displaying the pictures, and as usual, I'd probably go for washing line and pegs. Um, but something else I thought of if you did want to run it as more of an art gallery, then you could look into getting some uh or making some cardboard frames to put on the pictures just to make them look like they are actually in a gallery. Um, I did have a really quick look online to see if you could purchase cheap cardboard frames, and I didn't find anything really cheap, but I only had a really quick look, so I'm hoping that you might be able to find some somewhere, or you could just cut up strips of paper and stick them round the A4 paper to make a frame if you like. Um, I'm sure you could come up with a really good um display idea. So prizes, I don't think you need any prizes for this one. I think the joy of this stall is from the children creating the art, but um, as I said, if you wanted to get some frames, then I suppose you could get some nice frames and um put the pictures into frames, and then um the children could take home a framed picture, which would be really lovely, but yeah, you don't actually need any prizes for this one, and anybody can run this stall. Um the year 56ers could definitely do this store because really it's a case of the children just coming along and helping themselves and doing their pictures. It's a lovely quiet space if you need one, and um good for any child that needs to just get away from perhaps the more exciting games and things going on, so that's a nice calm um area, which is always good to have something like that at your event. Now, I actually found this at a children's festival I went to a few years ago, which was called the Just So Festival, which is an absolutely fantastic family festival if you're looking for one. It's basically a children's arts, crafts, theatre, music festival up in Cheshire, and I would highly recommend you give it a go. I think it's always the bank holiday weekend in August, um, and you can camp there um for the whole weekend, but it is just really really wonderful. So I just wanted to mention that festival in case anyone was looking for something like that. But yes, this is an idea that I saw at this festival, and I thought it was a really fab idea. So I just have to say that this particular idea does require a bit of prep, unlike the other ideas that I've just shared with you, where you could literally turn up on the day with a stack of A4 paper and do your stall, grab some crayons and you're done. This one actually does require some prep, but I think it's quite straightforward prep, and it wouldn't be um it's not a lot of thinking, it's very, very straightforward and just a bit of cutting. So, what you have to do, what what happens at the stall is um you basically have a tree, you display a tree. So, if you can imagine a tree made out of paper like stuck on a wall, so you have a tree trunk and then some branches and then the leaves of the tree, and on each individual leaves are written some uh combinations of letters, and the these are actually all phonics sounds that you would find in the phonics uh list for key stage one. So um you the child would come along to the gloss a tree spelt G-L-O-S-S-A-T-R-E-E gloss a tree, and they would pick some leaves that had some sounds on, and they could choose whatever they wanted, they can choose as many sounds as they want, and they can basically make up a new word using real phonic sounds, and then they create their new words, they you give them a sheet of paper so they can write their new word on, and then they have to um say what their new word means. So my son, when he was five, had a go on the glossary at this festival, and he made a new word, and I'm afraid I can't remember what the actual word was, but I remember the definition of the word because it was so incredibly random and unexpected. So he had his word, blah blah blah, whatever it was, and then we said to him, Okay, so what what does your word mean? And he said, He thought for a minute, and then he said, Oh, it means that I sell burgers but not hot dogs. And all the adults around, we just were a bit speechless for a minute because it was such an unexpected definition. But um, the person running this gloss tree thought it was absolutely fantastic and and loved it and went with it, and oh, it was just really funny. I just really liked it, and then we could see words that other children had made up and what their definitions were, and it was just so imaginative and creative. I absolutely loved it. So that's what actually happens when a child comes to the store. So, how do you actually make the store? What's the prep? If I were you, I would ask your English teacher at school. So, normally you would have a lead on the uh subject of English, um, so perhaps check with them uh for a list of all the phonic sounds, or you might be able to find them online, but probably best to check with them so you are getting the correct ones. Then you need to spend a bit of time cutting out some leaf shapes from different coloured paper, so you could go for some greens, some yellows, some oranges, maybe some reds to make your tree look lovely, and you can write a phonic sound on each leaf, and you will need multiples of each phonic sound, and because as the child takes the leaves off the tree, you'll need to put some more leaves on, and obviously, they might pick they might need two of the same sound in their word. Um, then you need to craft a trunk and some branches so that you that you can attach the leaves, um maybe attach the leaves with blue tack or paper clips or something like that. And this can definitely be a 2D tree, you don't have to make this amazing 3D actual tree, but however you want to make it entirely up to you. And so, you obviously, when you have your stool, you need to be able to display your tree. So, you do need to just give a little bit of thought as to obviously where the stool is, is it inside or outside? Are you next to a wall? Could you have the tree on the wall, that kind of thing? So, um, and then the other thing you need to prepare, so you need to prepare the tree and you need to prepare the sheets for the children to fill out when they come to your stall. So you could just print out a load of the sheets. I mean that's quite straightforward. So on the sheet, you would just need um a space for them to write their new word that they have created that very day, and then a box for them to write the definition of that word, and maybe draw a picture related to it or something. If it's an you know, if they've made a new noun, maybe they could draw a picture of what it is or something. Uh, and then basically your stall is ready. So, um so what you need uh therefore is some is the white paper with the printout on it for the children to fill in, you need coloured paper to make the leaves and the tree, or some cardboard for the tree trunk, something like that. Um, and you need your phonic sounds as well, and some pencils for the children to write their uh words and definitions. Again, not really necessary to have prizes because at the end of this uh glossary stall, your school will end up with a little list of words, or maybe a big list of words if it was popular. Uh basically made up words that the children have uh made up using real phonic sounds and new definitions, which I think is like really cool. So you've kind of basically got a little a new little dictionary that your school has put together, which I I really love the thought of that. Who uh who can run this stall? Probably best to be an adult, and even better if it was a teacher who regularly teaches phonics, um, so they can really help the children reinforce their phonic sounds as they pick the letters and the sounds off the tree and um you know maybe help them write it down or something. And I would like to think that um the teachers will be quite um happy to be involved in a store like that. So um yeah, this this one isn't very straightforward, but I just think it's such a lovely idea that I wanted to include it because you do still need paper in my defense. Number seven is a paper maze race. Now I found this idea online, so I haven't actually tried it, but I thought it was a really good, really easy idea. There are a couple of ways to run this one, so I'll explain both of them. So basically, what happens is you have a stack of mazes printed out on your A4 paper ready at your stall for when your customers arrive. You may need to have different difficulties. Um, obviously, a key stage two child is more capable of doing a maze than a reception child, so you might have to have a few different levels and some for adults as well, very important. Uh, your customer comes to your store and they um pay to take part in the paper maze race. So there's two ways to do this. You can either have a couple of children racing each other to complete the same maze or an appropriate age-appropriate maze at the same time, or you could run it as a competition where you have the person with the fastest time to complete their maze wins a prize. So you could have two children drawing through their maze at the same time, and you're timing them, and and whoever finishes first is the winner, or you can have um, for example, all of key stage two, you give them all the same maze, and you time them to complete it, and you then you have a leaderboard to see who can complete it the fastest. So it's entirely up to you how you want to do it. So your kit list for this are is basically a massive stack, as I've said, of of uh ready-printed A4 mazes, which again you can just search online for these, and there's a whole host of um different levels. You can even sometimes find themed ones, you can sometimes find Disney ones, for example. Um, so just have a look online, and as I said, you might like to get different ones for key stage one, key stage two, adult, that sort of thing. You need pens or pencils, they can actually do the maze. Um, you might want to have a stopwatch or just use your phone to collect timings, and you might need to display a leaderboard if you're doing it as a competition. So depending on how you're running it for the prizes, if you are doing a race against two or three children at the same time, then you might need an instant prize for the winner, like a suite or something. Um, but if you're doing a uh sort of fastest time in a category, so key stage one or all year twos or something, then you might just need a prize for the winner of that category. So you just need to decide in advance how that's going to run, and then obviously buy prizes accordingly. Um and who can run the stall? Well, it is pretty straightforward. I think year five or six will be fine running this stall, um, but you might like to have an adult supervising just because if they're you know using timers and things and trying to make a leaderboard, sometimes that can get a bit complicated. Obviously, it depends on the children who are running the stall, but might be good just to have somebody overseeing that. So the paper maze race is very straightforward, very easy. Just come along with a wadge of um pre-printed mazes and away you go. Right, my next idea is to create a whole school story. Now I haven't tried this, but I think it would be really good fun, and it gives you something to share with everyone at the end. Again, I believe this is very straightforward. So, have you ever played the game with your kids where you create a story together by taking it in turns to um say a sentence of the story? This is essentially that game, but in a whole school format. So you have someone come along to your stall and they basically get to add a sentence to the story that is being created, and eventually uh there should be a whole story at the end of the event, or that's the idea behind the stall, anyway. I would recommend at the start to pick a title of the story so there is already a focus of the story. It might be really nice to ask a teacher to suggest one or to think of one that fits to the theme of your event, but you need to try and make sure that it's appealing to everybody. So maybe try and make it um quite a wide story, um, so rather than focusing in just on football, for example, try and relate it to sports, or you know, try and um try not to pigeonhole the story um with the title, but but give an idea of um what it could be about, what could be in the story, so that the children have some ideas from the title. So the kit required is uh A4 paper. Now you might like to consider putting some lines on your A4 paper just to help the children write their sentence so it doesn't go all you know wavy on the page or something. Um, you need to provide them with pencil, and then you definitely need to think of a good way of displaying the story as it grows. So you could consider cutting your A4 paper into strips so that you just have a str each uh sentence on a strip that might be easier to pin up. I'm not really sure how best to do this. You may also want to consider when the child has written their sentence that you write it up on the board so that obviously for the new people coming to read the story, it's in very neat handwritings, it's easy for them to see what's been written already. Um that's kind that would I guess we would find out um whether that would work or which one of those options would work if we tried the stall. So if anyone tries it, please do feedback and let us know. Um, prizes I don't think are necessary because it's taking part in the story that counts and having your sentence included, and of course, the children can go to the story stall at the start of the fate, add a sentence, and they can come back half an hour later, see how the story's progressing, and maybe add another sentence in, and they can keep coming back as many times as they want. Who could run this stall? Well, I think it's probably best to have an adult, um, even better to have a couple of teachers running this stall because you need to make sure that the sentences go up in order of customers who's paid, and then you know they'll all be following on correctly. And the younger children in the school might need some help with their sentences, they might need someone to read out the story to them so far, they might need a bit of help with what could possibly come next in their sentence, maybe some ideas. Um, and you might also need a teacher to help decipher the handwriting, which I was writing out some certificates at my school recently, and I really struggled to decipher some of the handwriting on some of the things I needed to put in. So, teachers are obviously top experts at deciphering handwriting, so it might be really handy to have one on standby. So, as I said, I haven't tried this idea before, I'm not sure how it would go down. I'm wondering also if you could help the story evolve by dividing it into a structure to help it flow better. So, just off the top of my head, I was thinking perhaps you could um you know how when you play computer games you unlock various levels as you do different things. So maybe you could unlock parts of the story as you get more sentences. So, for example, you could start off by um having the title and then the first few sentences that are written need to describe the setting of the story, and then when you've got enough descriptions of the setting, then you can unlock the next paragraph, which means describing the character, um, and then after that you could move on to introducing a problem that the character has to solve, and so um rather than letting the story wander off into completely random territory, perhaps that might just help to keep it on track a little bit, and then you might end up with um a better product at the end. I don't know. I I it would be really interesting to try both methods and see um what would happen. So, as I say, if you do try this, please um please do let me know, and I can share any tips for other PTA volunteers. Obviously, the really exciting part of this stall is the potential story that you create to have. At the end, so it would be really fantastic to read it out, um, maybe at the end of your event, or at least email it out after the fate, or share it with the class teachers so they can maybe share it with the children, and you would end up hopefully theoretically, you would end up with a story written by the whole school, which would be fantastic, and you could have adults taking part and teachers taking part, and I think it would be really cool. I mean, you could even have um, you know, put out a call for some illustrators to come in and draw a picture that you could put in in between the text, that kind of thing. I think it would be really fun, um, fun creative stall to run and have a go at, and now I really want to try it now. I've described it! Right, idea number nine. I couldn't really think of a very good title for this one, so I've just called it idea soup because it's kind of a mix of ideas. So this is an idea actually that I've had for a while, but unfortunately I haven't been able to try it at any of my fates because I've never really had enough volunteers to justify running it. Um, however, this could be a stall that is free of charge because it's just a bit of fun for everyone. So if you're looking for something for people to do at your event but you didn't want to charge for all the stalls, then um perhaps this could be a good one for you. So the idea behind this stall came from me thinking about the fact that I I like listening to children's opinions on things actually and seeing what they think about things, and I thought it'd be really interesting to pose some questions and then get the children to give some answers to them, and that is basically what this stall is all about. So your customer would come up and there would be some questions on a display that they could give that, they could write their answers down and then you can display all the answers under the big questions. So I tried to have a think of some questions that would be fun for the children to answer. So you could go for things like if you were a superhero, what would your superpower be? Or if you were king or queen for the day, what would you do? Or we could get on to questions um where the children could give some practical tips. So we could say, you know, they're all learning about how to do things better for the environment. So you could ask questions about that, you could ask, I don't know, what could your family do to help the environment or help nature? Um, and then you could uh throw in some easy to answer questions like what's your favourite animal, what's your favourite colour, what's your favourite sweets, what are you what is your favourite outdoor game, or what's your favourite game you play at break time? Um you could write uh if you wrote a book, what would the title be of your book? That could come up with some interesting answers. Um if you're feeling brave, you could maybe ask some questions, ask some more serious questions about the PTA or your school, um, but obviously get permission from your head teacher about this first. So I'm thinking along the lines of what books would you like to see in the school library? What PE equipment would you like the PTA to buy or something? Um is there any playtime equipment you would like? What's your favourite stall at a fate? Or what stall um do you always want to do at a fate? Uh what's your favourite have you got any ideas for a school trip? You know, things like that. Obviously, get permission though, just in case some of the answers are a little you know potentially a little bit controversial. You never know what comes out of children's mouths. Um, and then you could even include some sort of silly questions, so you could I don't know, I just thought of these off the top of my head. Um, you could ask what's the most unusual thing to find in a pencil case, you could have a board um which is just a collection of knock knock jokes, so people could write down their favourite knock knock joke. You could have a finish the sentence board. Um so uh I just tried to think of something like the best thing about school trip is dot dot dot or my teacher does not like dot dot dot or one thing I would change about school is dot dot dot and you could see what they could come up with. Um and the other thing you could do on this uh sort of question and answer store is you could have some polls or some surveys to survey the children in your school so you could find out what the most popular flavour of ice cream is, for example, if everybody can just give their answer or what's the most popular cake or what's everyone's favourite breakfast, that sort of thing, just out of interest, you know, to see what everybody likes. Um you could have all the answers going on the board, um, anonymous if you like, might be necessary in some cases, and you could have as many questions as you like, uh, but I would suggest probably a minimum of three, just so that if you're um paying 50p to give your opinion on the questions, I think it's good to have three. So the kit required for this stall are some AFL paper, so the children can write their responses on that. And if you wanted to prep that in advance, you could cut it into shapes, or you could even like the best thing to cut it into would be speech bubbles, but they're um not easy to cut out, and if you have a really um large school, that might be quite a lot of work for you. So just as easy just to cut it into rectangles with the um with the um you know the guillotine. Um you need some pencil pencils so they can write their answers, um, and then I would recommend making large eye-catching questions so that they can be seen from quite far away, so that people might be attracted to come over and have a go at the stall, and then obviously you need to decide how you're going to display the questions and then display the answers underneath the questions. So, who could run this stall? Anyone can run this stall, it's very straightforward, but you might like to have an adult there just to check some of the answers, just in case there's anything that you feel should not be displayed on the board. Um, maybe even a teacher, I'm not sure, but um, yeah, definitely an adult, and perhaps some child helpers uh would be fine. So, like the story stall idea, this one is quite nice because it leaves you with some interesting info and facts to share afterwards, especially if you did a poll or a survey, you could then publish the results and you could say things like, Oh, 95% of the children at this school have cereal for breakfast, or 52% of the children like chocolate ice cream as their best ice cream, and I think the children would find that really interesting to gather those results. I also really like this one as it's giving the children a voice and asking their opinion and thoughts about things, and I know that when children are able to give their opinion and feel listened to, it's a very valuable experience for them. So I I think also this one would just be so interactive at your event, and people will walk past and have a look at the answers, and I think it will be a great talking point, and I'm sure there'll be some funny answers there that people could have a laugh with. So, um, yeah, I just I just really like this idea. And now it's number 10, and this is my final idea for running a stall based on A4 paper, and this is to make some bunting to stretch around your event. So, all you have to do with this is get your A4 sheets of paper, cut them into triangles so they're ready to be decorated. Your uh customers come along, you pass them a triangle, they decorate it however they like, and once they've finished, you um fold over the straight bit at the top of your triangle and staple it or celloter onto some string that you've already hung up, and as the event goes on and you get more and more customers, your bunting will get more and more flags on it, and hopefully, it would kind of grow and spread around your event. And I think it would look really eye-catching as it develops. So, again, very very straightforward. The kit you require for this is some A4 paper ready cut into triangles. I guess you could probably leave it as rectangles, but if you wanted to look like bunting, then it's generally a triangular shape, isn't it? Um, art materials that don't take too long to dry because you don't want loads of paint running off the sheets of paper and dripping onto the ground. Um, then you need some string, obviously, to make it into bunting, and some cellar tape or a stapler just to quickly add on the flags. Um, who can run this stall? This could be children in year five or six, but definitely needs an adult helper to attach the flags because you probably need to be quite tall, and obviously, we don't want to leave children in charge of a stapler, don't want any accidents there. And then at the end of your fate, hopefully, you will end up with a lovely long line of bunting, and you might be able to keep this for other events if it's um not too wet with paint, even you put it away really carefully. Of course, actually, another way of doing this is to provide white fabric cut into triangles and buy some fabric pens, and then the children can use that to decorate their flags, and probably that would last a bit longer than doing it with paper. But of course, fabric pens are quite expensive, uh, white fabric could be expensive unless somebody can donate some old bed sheets or something that you could cut up. Um and obviously paper is just it's really quick and easy if you do it on paper. So um I think it would be lovely to have the bunting kind of changing as the event goes on. Again, if you had a themed event, you could maybe suggest something the children could draw, or if you wanted to make sure the bunting really kind of goes together, you could just provide certain colours for the children to use and get them to just draw patterns on it, and then it would kind of all match. So I think it would be really nice to see how that evolves over your fate. And there you have it, those are my 10 ideas of stores you could try, which focus mostly on just using A4 paper, making them super cheap and quick to set up. And looking down the list, I've actually noticed that they're mostly all doing or making something, obviously because they involve paper, um, so they don't also don't require many instant prizes, um, which can also help really help to keep your costs down. And um, if usually you go for sweet prizes, then that also kind of reduces the amount of plastic and packaging that you're having to buy and throw away um in your event. So um, so yeah, I I I think they're pretty good ideas actually, and I'd really love to try them. Um, a lot of them are quite flexible too, so that you can easily adapt them to your event. So, for example, the blindfold drawing one, um, I think I said that at our winter fair we um picked a snowman and then in the summertime we did a a flower or a butterfly, so you can just pick a simple shape that fits into your um theme, which is really nice, and again you can also change the story one or the questions one to fit into your theme, and who doesn't love a theme at a fate? I for one absolutely love a theme, uh helps draw everything together, and I just really really like it. Um, and as they're very cheap to set up, you could consider running these stores for free if you wanted to, and if you wanted to encourage community engagement and people coming together and talking to each other, then quite a few of them are have quite good talking points around them. So, if you wanted to have some stalls that aren't just focused on the fundraising, um then stalls involving A4 Paper, I think, are the best ones because paper is so cheap. So um I have tried a few of them uh myself, but I would love to have a go at the others uh at future events. And if any of you try them out, please do let me know how you got on, and if you would have any tips for somebody else, that would be fantastic to share. So do let me know by email. It's hello at ptapodcast.com, and I would love to hear uh how it went, and also you know, if you're in the middle of your summer event planning, let me know how you're getting on and what kind of events you're going in for this year. So that's kind of it for this episode. Um, I wish you all a successful week with whatever you're planning in your PTA, and if you have your summer event coming up, I'm keeping everything crossed that the rain is not gonna come, and you have a beautiful um summer's day in which to run your event, and I hope it's uh a huge success, and you get all the volunteers you want, and then you can go home and have a relax and uh and a rest afterwards, which you all do deserve. So, uh, thank you for listening to this episode all about how to use a full paper on a stall at your event. Um, and I'll speak to you next time. Bye.