Planning your big Christmas event? Take some inspiration from these festive success stories
All the fun of the fair
‘Our Winter Wonderland showed the PTFA was back with a bang’
T
he children gasped as they entered the school hall. They
expected an empty room but found a space filled with fun, festive activities, adorned with 20 sparkling Christmas trees and resplendent with decorations. Teaching assistants and PTFA helpers dressed as elves were on hand to show them around. They had no idea we’d planned everything in just three weeks. Our PTFA had lapsed completely
during the pandemic and we began its relaunch in October. My wife suggested I present a report at the first meeting; I ended up becoming chair. The Winter Wonderland event was already in the diary, but we hadn’t made any preparations whatsoever. So we created a WhatsApp and Facebook group and
scheduled a planning meeting for early November. I’m in the military, and in our
circuit training, we refer to the different training positions as ‘stances’. I used this concept as my vision for our Winter Wonderland. Children would start at the first stance and continue until they had completed them all. We decided to hold a session in the morning specifically for SEN children, and get the other year groups to participate throughout the day. The PTA got busy hiring and making activities and our eventual seven stances were: l Inflatable bouncy snow globe: We hired it from an external provider and it came complete with cotton snowballs.
l Rocking reindeer rodeo: Long queues formed because only one child could participate at a time, but it was a big hit with the older years. l (S)elfie station: We created winter scene backdrops and encouraged pupils to take creative selfies. l Santa’s grotto: The PTFA secretary’s father-in-law volunteered to be Santa. Our new treasurer is an Usborne books rep and arranged a deal so that each child received a book from Santa. l Pin the nose on the reindeer: We stuck big reindeer posters onto magnetic whiteboards and used red magnets for the nose. l Name the elf: Pupils coloured in pictures of elves and the PTFA presented prizes for the best one to KS1 and KS2. l Hot chocolate and marshmallows: The final stance was in the classrooms at the end of the day.
pta.co.uk AUTUMN 2023 37
AS TOLD TO: CAROL ROGERSON AND HELEN PINE
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