Book Fair Recap

Here's my book fair recap, finally!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for all the wonderful book fair tips!  I did find it a little stressful but the kids had fun and I feel much better going into my spring fair since I (sort of) know what to do now!

One of the best tips was to cook the weekend before because I'd be too tired during the fair to cook...boy was that true!  I was wiped out every day.  We ate a lot of take out and Mr. Lodge's cooking that week.

 Here are some things that really helped things go more smoothly:
**I put 4th graders in charge of advertising.  They made posters to put all around the school and did a great job.  This also helped them get excited because they felt like they were a part of running the book fair.

**Have plenty of change to start (thank you Mrs. S!). I definitely hadn't even thought of this and everything ends with $.99 so I went through a lot of pennies!

**Thank you note center after the fair.  The kids wrote very sweet thank you notes for all the volunteers.

**Have the kids make decorations.  Again, this helped them participate and get excited.  We made pennants of favorite books, favorite characters, and books that would be at the fair.

Skippy Jon Jones, kinder style

**4th grade buddies for the little kids.  It's been past practice to have a preview day and a buying day for each class. The kids write down the books they'd like, the location (carts were numbered, tables were lettered), and the price and bring their wish lists home.  Then parents would send in money on "buying day".  I'm undecided if I like this method but parents and teachers both seemed happy with it.  It was a little crazy trying to help all of the kindergartners and 1st graders write down titles and prices when there were maybe 5 adults to 20 kids.  Halfway through the fair, a fourth grade teacher suggested she bring her class down and the big kids each buddied up with a kindergartner to help them write down their wish lists.  That worked wonderfully and the older kids really like to help out.

Things I would do differently:
**Be more on top of things!  The fair kind of snuck up on me.  At one point, I definitely thought I had an extra week to get ready when the fair was actually starting in one week!  I will absolutely have to do lists ready way ahead of time.

**Start sending out notices to parents earlier advertising the fair and recruiting volunteers.

**Narrow the book selection a bit if I can.  Scholastic sent two tables of cook books, of which about 5 individual books sold.  They also sent me a ton of middle school aged books which were either too hard or just inappropriate for my kiddos.  Per my request, they didn't send any toys, which I was happy about and no one really seemed to notice.

**Have older buddies for each K/1 class to help them write their lists.

**Advertise the online book fair better.  I think it could have been more profitable if people were more aware that we had an online portion of the fair.


Thanks again for all the helpful tips and tricks :)