Happy Mother’s Day!

The weeks leading up to Mother’s Day are a great time for fundraising.  Find all the crafters in your school (teachers and staff too!) and hold a craft fair with 50% of the proceeds going back to the artist and 50% to the school. To maximize the number of people shopping, try and hold it during parent/teacher conferences or in conjunction with a school event, like a theater production or concert.

The School at Columbia University holds a craft fair at the school right before the winter holidays.  At the one I attended, there were some really wonderful items for sale including artwork from the head Librarian, and button necklaces made by a parent.  Aside for raising money for the school, finding out that your child’s teacher, or their friend’s parent is so creative can be a wonderful surprise. Everyone enjoys a chance to display a hidden talent, or promote their business, especially for a good cause.

The kids can join in too if you have some money to invest in supplies and volunteers to supervise.  You don’t necessarily need a lot of talent or even ideas.  The Internet is full of wonderful and easy instructions.  Take a look on pinterest, instructables and wikihow to find tutorials and free template downloads.  You can even have the kids make crafts on the spot during the craft fair.  Have a few volunteers work with the kids to free up the others to sell or shop. 

My personal favorites are paper roses: they last so much longer than the real ones.  I started making these as a student teacher in the library at the Martin Luther King Jr. High School as a lunchtime project.  It was adorable how the teen-age boys enthusiastically made roses to give to their moms and sweethearts. 

Supplies:

You’ll need scissors (safety scissors for the little ones), a glue gun, or just regular paper glue or Elmer’s and paper.   If you want to be a little fancy, buy green florist wire tape for the stems, green paper for the leaves, and hand crafted paper for the petals.

Tissue paper, origami, hand painted or construction papers also work.  Cut the paper into large squares (6x6 or larger).  Starting at the edge cut the paper into a spiral, leaving an inch margin until you reach the end of the paper in the middle. Insert the end of the paper into a doubled up 12” length of green wire and glue, then wrap the paper around tightly enough to form a flower. Wrap the floral tape around the wire to finish the stem.  You can put a single one in a bud vase or make a dozen. Spray a little perfume on them if you want fragrance.

If you don’t have much money for supplies, ask parents if they have any of the following items at home to donate:  small glass jars, extra wrapping paper, ribbon, buttons.  If you are a hoarder like I am, you’ve got all sorts of materials that can be reused and recycled into artwork.  The local businesses in your neighborhood, like the hardware store, or art supplies store, might also be willing to donate supplies.

There are many other projects; kids and parents can make for sale at the craft’s fare. 

Handmade cards are fun and easy.   You’ve seen them at the shops, where they sell for $4 or more!  You just need paper, crayons, markers, colored pencils, and your imagination to make cards and envelopes.

Everyone loves a small plant for their window or desk.  Take glass jars, or small clay pots, little pebbles, soil and flower seeds and you have another nice gift.  The kids can decorate the pots with paints, paper or ribbon.

Home made baked goods are always popular.  Just make sure to provide a list of ingredients to avoid setting off anyone’s food allergies.  Its also nice if they can be individually wrapped and transportable, even if you just use small brown or plastic bags.

If you know people who knit or sew, ask them to donate items or offer to make personalized items.

The number and types of crafts are really only limited by your imagination (and what you can find on the internet or in craft books!).  Speaking of books, old books can be converted into art.  Down on 14^th Street in New York,  I found a man who takes covers from used books, spreads them out and paints them.  They were so unique and interesting I bought several.

Depending on the number of volunteers you have you can add a flea market, but be sure that you only accept clean, saleable goods and that you have a plan to donate whatever does not sell.  Sometimes people see flea markets as a chance to dump items they (and no one else) really wants.  This can cause a lot of extra work for your volunteers so be selective in what you accept for sale.  Excellent items would be gently used designer purses, scarves and clothes, jewelry, and some houseware items.  Quality children’s picture books and popular fiction are also sell well.  

Happy Kindergarten Parents

By now, parents have received an offer letter from the New York Department of Education inviting their child to attend Kindergarten in September.  This is the perfect time to not only meet and greet these parents, but to invite their active participation in the Parents Association or Parent/Teacher Association (PTA) of your school.  Many of these parents have been paying large amounts to send their children to private pre-school.  So now is the time to ask these parents to contribute to the PTA, while their are excited about their school choice and have not taken off for summer vacation. Some PTA's use these funds to pay for Teachers' assistants in Kindergarten classrooms so that the Teacher is not spending all of his or her time tying shoe laces and wiping noses.  This is a great selling point for raising funds.

 It is also time to recruit parents to help with upcoming PTA events for the next school year.  Divide the number of incoming students by PTA board members and give each board member a list of incoming parents to talk to.  The investment you make in outreach now can really pay off in the next school year.