We’ve been organising class teatowels in the run up to Christmas for a number of years, with the baton passed on to new parents each year. Here are our top tips:
- We use Class Fundraising and have never had any problems, with the delivery on time and good quality teatowels.
- Allow lots of time – order the pack as early as you can, and get going as early as you can. To get the best price, the deadline to get the finished design back to the company is around October half-term.
- The company sends a kit including templates, sticky backed paper for the children to draw their portraits and a guide to working out the correct size for each portrait. It’s a bit fiddly, but seems to work. Basically, you work out how many portraits need to fit on the template, then cut out squares of the correct size for the children to draw on.
- We have ordered calico bags as well as teatowels in the past, although it is difficult to guess how many to order so that you don’t get left with too many (you can’t really sell them to anyone else in the school!)
- We promote them as excellent Christmas presents for grandparents and other family members.
- We usually just focus on the Reception classes, although have sometimes also included Year 1 in the past. We’ve found that just focussing on one year is a manageable workload in a very busy time for the PTA.
- We arrange a time slot or two with the teachers for two parents to go into a class and sit with the children to draw their self-portraits. It’s good fun, and a lovely job for Reception parents.
- Every year there is at least one child that doesn’t want to draw a picture, but we’ve always managed to come up with something with the teacher’s help
- To get a good result, we have usually got the children to draw in pencil and then an adult go over it in pen (usually supplied by the company). We usually get one adult to write all of the children’s names under their pictures so it looks neater.
- Some years we have also included pictures of the teachers – up to the staff!
- We sell the teatowels via a simple letter to all the parents with a slip for them to return their money. If Reception parents are in charge of the process, they are able to remind and cajole in the playground.
- Once the design arrives, putting a photo of it on Facebook can really boost sales.
- If we have some left, we sell them at the Christmas Fair, and in the past have given them as gifts to Reception teachers and teaching assistants.
Briony Harmer
Chair, Princes Risborough Primary School Association
(Princes Risborough Primary School Association are a member of The Stamptastic PTA Rewards Scheme) and received a £30 fundraising voucher for writing this blog post. If you would like to write a blog post for us please join our Stamptastic PTA and Schools Facebook Group to find out more!)
