Our middle school PTO has done candy grams for years as a small fundraiser and also a fun thing for the kids. For 25 cents, they would get a special piece of paper they'd address to a friend or even a teacher and we'd tape on a little piece of candy and deliver it for them. Sometimes parents would even send in money and buy them for their kids. We've always done this for Halloween and the Winter Holidays, and the school's student council has done it for Valentine's Day. This year due to a new school health initiative in our state, we will no longer be able to sell candy. So... I'm trying to figure out some alternative to the candy in our candy grams. Since this is middle school, things like pencils and stickers don't go over very well. Any ideas out there?

Thanks!

We've heard of schools doing little inexpensive toys that are considered cool enough for middle school in place of candy grams. You are right -- pencils and stickers probably won't cut it. At a nearby middle school, they sold tiny rubber ducks and that was a big hit. Go figure!

We can put your question out on Facebook, too, to see if we can get some other parents to weigh in!

Rose C.
Community Manager

Thanks for the idea! We have come up with one alternative idea so far. We are going to do "spirit grams" coinciding with spirit week at the school. We are going to have things like temporary tattoos with the school name or mascot that the kids can purchase or give to their friends. Our principal isn't too crazy with the idea of little toys in the school, but he was OK with the tattoos. We still need to come up with an idea for something to do around the holidays.

Hi! Our school is also doing the 100% candy free. We got the Action for Healthy kids grant . We were talking about Valentine Grams too and we thought Pencils might work since they are like suckers that we normally put on the grams. Last year we handed out silly bands for "Green Day" which were SUPER inexpensive on Oriental Trading and the kids loved them. We don't want to use the same thing for Valentines, but if your school allows the bands they are cheap!

I love the idea of spirit tattoos, but I worry about it becoming a popularity contest. How do less popular kids at your school who might not get any of these "grams" -- no matter what they are -- feel about them?

I'm not sure if there has been an issue in the past with students who haven't gotten candy grams feeling slighted. I've been at the school for years and haven't heard anything about that. I do know that sometimes I've seen kids who have sent a lot of candy grams to themselves! And some of them get embarrassed when their parents send them one. Our elementary school used to go through the list of students and send a candy gram to any child who didn't have one purchased for them, but we don't do this in the middle school.