Our PTO offers an annual discount holiday shop this time of year for two evenings to allow students to come in and purchase gifts for their families. It is a labor intensive event, requiring a lot of volunteers at a busy time of year. Do other PTO's offer holiday shops in general? Any ideas on how to keep these shops from becoming too much work?

We just set up today for one. I came from a fundraising company in 5 boxes. Each box contained items in the same price range. Then at each table, the unload items are color coded with star stickers. Budget Envelopes were sent home today with a list of items and both were provided by the company.

The shop took a 45-mins to set up. 15 mins for 3 people to count items on the tables.

The shop will be available during the day for the students to browse with thier envolopes and parent volunteers are going to help choose according to the List on the Envelopes.

We do ours daytime too. Classes come down one at a time.

HI
We just had our holiday shoppe. It was a great success. This is our second year of holding it during our annual Breakfast w/Santa on a Saturday. In the years past, we've had it during the school day where classes would come down to shop one at a time. The only problem, (ok, there were a couple of problems with this way of doing this), was that we needed lots of volunteers(and you know how hard they are to round up) and the children who were not able to buy anything would have to sit outside the classroom and wait for the rest of the kids to finish their shopping before returning to the classroom. Plus it took time away from the teacher teaching. Teachers didn't like this and neither did some of the parents. SO....that is when we came up with the idea of holding it during our Breakfast. It was a one day event that lasted several hours. It cut down on volunteer help. Actually, doing it this way we were able to obtain the help of highschoolers who were looking to fill their 'community service hours'. The set up and clean up only took 1-2 hours total. We had 2 registers going, one on each end of the tables. (these were set up horse shoe style) We color coded the products according to prices (prices varied from 15 cents to $5.25). Make sure you use stickers that dont stick too too well, some companies will not accept returns if they are written on or stickered. Our event turned out great! This was our second year of doing it. One thing I want to add....make sure your products are decent ones. We went with Concord Holiday Shoppe (Worcester, MA) and their products were GREAT! The parents were very impressed.
Hope this helps!

Our school reinstituted the Holiday Shoppe this year with great success. Gifts were provided thru a fundraising company and were priced between $1 to $7. My children were very proud to pick out their own gifts and spend their own allowance for Christmas gifts. Thank you St. Paul Home-School Assoc. for making this possible!

Our school also does the "Santa Shop". We have a preview on one night for the parents. The parents send a list and price ranges to the school with the child. The child gets to shop during the day as a class(First grade on Monday ect.) This seems to work really well. We do not have night time sales. WE have a lot to choose from and put them in price order, so that way the volunteers know just where to take the kids for their purchase. GOOD LUCK!!!