I Need Ideas For Games Stalls For The Primary School Summer Fair......

The human fruit machine - very cheap - 3 people with 3 (or more) different (plastic) fruits in a pouch or bag round their waist delve in and pull out a random fruit, if you get 3 the same you win. Have seen this at a couple of school fetes. The best one was when the 3 ladies playing the fruit machine really got into the spirit by rocking around making whirring and chink, chink chink noises as the fruits came out. The noises and their silly faces got big laughs from the children.

Human fruit machine is also great fun when it's people who the kids know and can laught at - vicar, headteacher etc. I think they need to be dressed in big boxes suitably decorated, then not only can they not see each other, they can't see what they're choosing.

You don't seem to have sponge throwing, also very popular. Need a basic stocks for victim to sit behind. Penalty Shoot Out, cheap and cheerful.

From my experience what raises the most money is the raffle and the tombola. Tin tombola, bottle tombola, teddy tombola - why people will spend so much money with no guarantee of a prize astonishes me, but it will rake the funds in. And so will this: the JamJar stall! Ask parents and supporters to send in filled jamjars - cotton wool balls, shampoo sachets, pasta, sweets, good as new small toys, stationery etc. Whatever fits. THEN make it a tombola, charge at least 50p but give a prize every time. It will sell out in no time. You can also ask for the jars to be decorated, and give a prize for the best decorated jar in each year group or class.

Cards: spread a deck of cards face up on a table. Put a small sweet on most, with a small bar of chocolate on a few - maybe the picture cards, or the kings and queens. Players pick a card from another pack, and win whatever's on the matching card.

Splat the rat: length of drainpipe attached to sturdy board, rubber mallet, stuffed rat. Drop rat down drainpipe, give prize if rat splatted.

Hoopla. Chucking beanbags at empty tins.

OLYMPIC BALLOON THROWING! This is hysterical but doesn't raise a huge amount. Fill lots of balloons with water (that's the tricky bit!) People enter in pairs, adult or children (decide on age in advance! For a primary school I'd set it at 11 - ie if they're at 'big school' they're an adult) The 'course' is set up with markers at metre intervals (borrow from PE equipment). The people stand a metre apart, one throws to the other and back without dropping it or the balloon bursting. If successful they move two metres apart. And so on. Charge 50p or £1 per team to enter, have a decent prize for the winners in each group. (You can do this with eggs but you can bet your life eggs will be thrown all over the place at the end of the day and it won't be fun at that point. Plus salmonella risks etc). Best to do this with really cheap thin balloons, not big ones.

Have you looked at Baker Ross and Peeks catalogues? I think they used to offer advice on how to organise such events, down to layout etc. Useful stuff even if you don't buy their games and prizes.

If I think of any others I'll come back ...

There are a number of party ideas to browse in This Thread

HTH

We are a small school and with our raffle and summer & Christmas fete manage to raise about £5k

• Cream tea stall for the grandparents. raises £100
• Beer tent raises £100
• BBQ. Try and get a local bakers to donate some buns and then buy some burgers and sausages. Sell for £1 each. We raise about £300 from this alone.
• Other stalls we have:
• Tombola - general brings in about £200
• Tombola - bottle brings in about £300
• Ping pong balls & jam jar. We just put £5 in small jar. raises about £40
• Goldfish tank with laminated picture - you have to throw a coin onto a certain part of the picture. Make it small and you can win £5 raises £40
• We hire a big attraction i.e. surfing machine or bucking broncho. Costs about £300 and you just break even but it brings in the kids with their family.
• Hook a duck for little ones raises £40
• Lollypop lotto. Like lucky straws only with lollipop which they keep what ever raises £30
• Football Tombola - bought from Baker Ross raises £60
• Wheelbarrow races free
• Tug of War free
• Get a police car of fire engine to visit free
• Sweet stall raises £50
• Lucky dip parents have to donate a prize value at least £1 and wrapped. raises about £150
• Guess the teacher from baby photos raises about £50

The food and drink is where the money is so it needs to have fun things for kids to do to keep them there all afternoon. Also consider buying decent raffle prizes i.e TV/DVD, Digital Camera, MP3 player, £100. Much easier to sell tickets if quality prizes. We easily sell over £1k worth of tickets. Not bad considering less than 200 kids in school.

Find out which parents have business contacts. We get icecream for free which we sell in interval in parents panto (another fund raiser which brings in £1k), cream cakes from a baker, burgers from a butcher. Meal for 2 from a resturant owner.

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And fools seldom differ