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.
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 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.
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 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.
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...
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