Holidays at Hoover Elementary

Story time with Daddy after a day at the Holiday Shop

As a mom who is highly involved with the school, I really appreciated that Penguin Patch taught our kids valuable lessons while still bringing a profit to the PTA.

The Holidays are here! As VP of the PTA, one of my jobs was to ensure the holiday fundraiser ran smoothly. It sounds like a stressful job, but it really wasn’t too bad. For the past several years, the school has used Penguin Patch. We’ve had strong success from that, so it wasn’t a hard decision to use them again.

This year is Hoover Elementary’s 10th anniversary, which means a special celebration is planned for the students, families, and teachers. This put extra weight on the holiday fundraiser to make sure there would be enough funds in the bank, so I decided to markup the Penguin Patch prices a little bit more than usual this year--up to 20%. While this raised the toy prices, we reconciled making the increase with the understanding that the prices would go back down next year.

Since we had worked with Penguin Patch in the past, they had a record of our previous orders, including reorders. They had everything prepared for us--I literally just needed to give them my signature, and then they shipped us our toys. The toys arrived two days before our shop was scheduled to begin, which put us in good shape for setup.

We put extra tables in the back of the cafeteria, and kids were given the chance to come and check out the products as they finished up with lunch.

Trevor and I have been working on teaching Lauren how to handle money. As a second grader, it’s not like she has much need to purchase things that we wouldn’t be buying for her anyway, but we do want her to understand that money doesn’t grow on trees--it has real value. Penguin Patch was a good way to explain this idea to her. We handed her $10 and told her she had to get something for Tanner, and after that, she could get whatever else she wanted. With the shop, she was able to visualize how the money was limited in quantity, and that she could only buy so much before it ran out. It forced her to prioritize what she wanted instead of asking for everything that looked slightly appealing.

We also asked the volunteers to emphasize to the kids that the shop was a great time to buy gifts for their friends. From the volunteer standpoint, it was fun to watch the kids deliberate over which gifts their best friends would most appreciate, and it prevented a good portion of the selfishness that so many elementary schoolers tend to exhibit. As a mom who is highly involved with the school, I really appreciated that Penguin Patch taught our kids valuable lessons while still bringing a profit to the PTA.

This year, we exceeded expectations by raising about $1,200. We raised enough money to be able to throw our 10th anniversary party AND have money leftover for future projects!