We do a bottle raffle every year at our Spring Carnival. We use old soda bottles, mayonaise jars, pretzel bottles, I usually go to the dollar store - so many treasures for a buck - and get water bottles or canisters that might be a good size. We always have an issue with big peanut butter jars with all of the allergies, so atleast you know these are clean. Now would be a good time to get summer sales items.

We purchased plastic pitchers with lids at the Dollar Store.

you may want to make it a jar-decorating-contest out of it. the class with the most creative jar wins ice cream party or something.

or.... you can mark on the outside....50% to goal and make marks. kids will want to reach the top of the jar to make the goal.

d

The Dollar Tree has 2 gallon plastic jugs that we use for things like this. They are only $1.00. If you don't have a Dollar Tree around your area, I'm sure other "dollar" stores would have something like that for relatively cheap price, but buying the animal crackers in their big containers is an excellent idea. I'll have to remember that...

backtofundraising;134003 wrote: Our K teacher has several large plastic containers from pretzels bought at a warehouse club-Sam's, BJ's, not sure which one. She uses them to store lots of small items, like prizes for her prize box.

Uh oh - memory flash... I recall more than once I bought the big plastic jars of animal crackers, cookies, or pretzels at Sam's and then were hurrying the kids to eat them all up, because I needed the jar for a PTO event! Buying those jars of goodies was usually cheaper than buying empty containers if I didn't have time to scrounge them. (Of course that was also back in the days when we could send snacks for the class, so I killed two birds with one stone - provided a snack and gained a jar!) The gallon size ones were the most universal to use. But the animal crackers often came in one that was slightly shaped like a bear, and those were cute, too.

Did anyone ever master the art of cutting a big slit in those hard plastic lids? That was a mess. There were times I heated up an old ice pick and poked it over and over, basically melting a slit. But that was a pain. I finally got a dad with all sorts of tools to do it. I'm not sure what he used - a drill or a speciality saw. But it was much better - a much cleaner cut.

Our K teacher has several large plastic containers from pretzels bought at a warehouse club-Sam's, BJ's, not sure which one. She uses them to store lots of small items, like prizes for her prize box.