PTO Today

I have read that many schools have ice cream socials, how many people are in attendance. We have a school of 625 students. I thinking that is alot of ice cream and alot of mess.

Please give me ideas.

Thanks

We make this event our "Welcome back to school" event. We send home fliers with the school packet that goes home at the end of the summer. With our school of almost 500 we usually get around 250 - 300 kids and their families. In regards to the ice cream we keep it simple. We go with the hoodsie cups. You can purchase them at BJs or one of those types of super stores. Normally there like 36 in a package for maybe 6 bucks or something. So we'll purchase almost 30 packages, but the cost is less than $200.

By going this route you don't have to deal with sprinkles, whip cream, cherries, the mess, etc. Simply have your helpers remove the cup lid and stick a spoon in it. Kids come up a grab one.

So by going this route it lets us focus more on the fun of the event, which includes the music, games, prizes, etc.

Hope this helps.
PresidentJim

We actually have never scooped ourselves. Dairy Queen will usually work with you to give you very inexpensive cups and you can provide the toppings and another time we had brewsters come in for 3 dollars a cone. Really a lot "neater" all the way around...
d

We actually have our teachers scoop-- we have hot fudge, sprinkles and whipped cream- Teachers scoop 1-2 scoops into each bowl-- and say hi to everyone as they do it--- we play music, have some type of entertainment, bouncers some years-- we have a school of 575 and we go through 9 large ice cream company tubs of ice cream-- most be get donated-- probably spend 400.00 to do the event, but worth it for the first look at what PTO does and a nice welcome to school that's free.

Thanks this helps, we can't change the teachers time. They like talking just to the parents. So, maybe we can combine the ice cream and music for the kids. Maybe we can get the parents interested on what we are going there at the school.

We have done this once for "National Turn TV Off Week" in April. We had six 3 gallon tubs donated by Rite-Aid (Thrifty Ice-Cream) and they also gave us cups and cones without asking for them. We purchased banana split trays, syrup, sprinkes. We sold cones for 50 cents, 2 scoop sundaes for $1.00 and banana splits for $2.00. We had a HUGE turn out of 300 (enrollment is 700) and it was a big hit. We also had karakoke going on with it. Even teachers sang "High School Musical"! Everyone had a blast. There would have been more but the Lakers were palying that night (we are in Los Angeles). We will definately repeat this one.

We have our ice cream with March is Reading month. We have an ice cream social (we sell tickets ahead of time), a book fair in the Library, and something using music in the gym. We get the ice cream squares from Gordons and just unwrap them and put them in a bowl and have an assortment of toppings.

We do this every year as our kick-off event. We have a local ice cream company that has donated ice cream, cups, spoons, and napkins to us and we scoop it ourselves. We have chocolate syrup as our only topping as we have found that people tend to hoard when we have more toppings and it creates a big mess. We have a local DJ who donates his time to us for that evening. We have district leaders come, local government leaders, etc as this is a great, relaxed setting in which to talk and enjoy each other's company.

It is a huge hit every year. Oh and last year, we scooped almost 800 cups of ice cream.

In the past we went with our local Maggie Moos, they provided several flovors, kept it cold, scooped for us and provied toppings, cups, spoons etc. easy and no parents are pulled away from the event and their family. We are looking into Dippin Dots this year or the local frozen custard shop. The ice cream is free (pd by PTO)so everyone can attend.
Send home an RSVP form to get a # estimate for the event.

No Dixie cups for us! We gather about a 10-12 volunteers and set up about 4 lunchroom tables (maybe 40-50 linear feet). Then we do it assembly line style with volunteers serving everything rather than having kids help themselves. The beginning of the line starts with ice cream (at least 3 flavors) and then various toppings down the line: chocolate, caramel, or strawberry syrup, whipped cream, gummi bears, crumbled oreos, chocolate or colored sprinkles, sliced bananas, sliced strawberries, and, of course, the ever-important cherry!

It's a huge hit but everyone loves it. We do this for kids only as a celebration once their standardized testing has been completed (several days in Washington state). It's a celebration and thank you for a job well done!