I will begin my term as PTO President this fall. I am looking for any type of reading and math incentive programs for our school. Are there any businesses that are willing to help donate to these type of businesses.

I have been active in our PTO for the past couple of years but our PTO has not been big on promoting education especially in the reading and math area. I want to change this if possible. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Best wishes,
Renee

Our school uses "READ IT!". My favorite year was two years ago. Someone drew, cut out and then laminated a large, white dog (a dalmation without spots). There is one for each classroom participating. The dogs were taped up in the main hall (we have windows in ours). For every ten books read (we do this for K-2, so every 10 pages constitutes a book. You have to adjust for your school), a student gets to write his/her name on a black dot (with a silver gel pen). The dog with the most spots wins a pizza and ice cream party with the principal. We sure had a lot of spots!
This year, we did "READING THROUGH THE ALPHABET", where each student read 10 books to get a letter. Each letter had a prize attached. "A" was Animal Crackers. "L" was Lunch with Teacher. "P" was Pizza with the Principal. You get the idea. We had 4 students make it to "Z". The program lasts about 6 weeks.
THE COST
The district office kicks in for prizes, as does the school budget. Our PTVO kicks in. At our school, each child, K-2, receives a brand new book each week, regardless of how many they have or have not read. We get the books from the RIF (Reading Is Fundamental) program. Don't ask me how to get the books, because they just come each year. Your school probably gets them too. If not, check your search engine for Reading Is Fundamental. We also do T-Shirts for the students, parents and staff to buy. We sell them at cost. The dalmation shirt said "Spot A Good Book And Read It!". This year, the shirts said "Reading Through The Alphabet" with big block "A B C" letters.

You can do searches on the net for things like "arts in education" or even your local college. Sometimes the kids or even professors (child education) do stuff on the side or in coordination with the school. You can turn to your library as well. Perhaps have a professional come and do story time, and then break out into groups and create your own book.

Also look at your local arts council. I've got a place called "Young Audiences of Greater Dallas". They are performers who come to your school (for a fee) and the topics vary. You can see if you have a local organization of children's book authors. I found one as well, and an author will come for about $100/hr for a presentation for our kids. This will be a "hands on" type event. And she will tailor it to our needs.
Hope some of this helps,
Lisa @ Tx

Thank you both so much, what super cool ideas.
Being new at this I am looking for any help that I can get. I want to make this up comming school year educational but fun for the children.

Once again thank you. :cool:
Renee

As far as prizes go, we were looking for something simple and fun and came up with kind of a different idea. You know those points you can collect off of packages of Kool-aide, well a few of us got to talking and for the price of postage and Kool-aide (which a few of us agreed we buy anyway) we can pirchase some really great prizes and boost our kids at the same time! THe was the issue of limits per household on items but agreed if five moms each order we should be okay!
We have also used the reading incentive program from Pizza Hut (I think that was in Iowa) and our daughter loved the idea of reading ten books to earn a free personnal pizza!

Don't know where you live - but we're in the 'burbs of Chicago. Our minor league baseball affilliate of the Florida Marlins runs a program with levels of reading to reach each base culminating in reaching home. (free hot dog & soda, t-shirt, parade around the field and ticket to game). They benefit, too, because of course for every kid that goes, an adult goes and spends not only for the ticket but for concessions, also. The t-shirts are sponsored by other sponsors of the baseball team so they are fairly cheap for the team to provide, also. When we were there for the parade for our school in mid-May I heard that our team sponsors 175,000 kids per year so you know they're doing well in the process and that's 175,000 kids that read 800 minutes. If there's a team near you check into it. If you don't know if there's a team near you let me know where you are as I have a book with all minor league baseball teams.