Monday, September 15, 2008

My Kind of Fundraiser!

Back in March I wrote a blog entry saying that McNeil Canyon School has some of the coolest field trips (Extreme Tubing). Now I get to say they have the best fundraiser I've ever seen: carrots!
After spending years handling fundraisers where people buy candy, cookies and every form of sugar known to humankind, it is refreshing to have a fundraiser that involves natural sugars right from the ground.
The kids in McNeil's 5th grade class got double duty, doing this fundraiser 2 years in a row since their teacher Bill (pictured in the foreground, left) moved from 4th grade last year to 5th grade this year. Students came prepared in muck boots, old clothes and some in wet weather gear. And they all came with the attitude that this is a fun fundraiser: they get to be outside, get muddy, get wet, pick raspberries between trips to the field, stuff themselves on carrots and overall have a blast for the 2 hours it takes them to pull, wash, weigh and bag 500 pounds of carrots.
At $2/lb., the carrots bring in $1000 to help pay for the very cool field trips (they're going to Seward later this week!). Two hours of work (and some planning with pre-orders) makes this pretty simple for the kids. The challenging part is for their teacher to plant, water (not this year!), weed and thin 7 rows of carrots all summer long. My puny 25 foot row of carrots keeps me busy enough. I don't think I'll volunteer to be Bill!

No comments: