School

Fall festival booth sign-up

A festival is a row of booths. If the cake walk has six parents and the ticket booth has none, the problem was the sign-up, not the parents.

Why the group text fails

“Pick a booth” without a cap sends every friend group to the photo backdrop. The quiet jobs — tickets, trash, first aid table — stay empty.

What the sheet should do

• Each booth is a slot with a lead-sized capacity.
• You can add a second slot, “helper,” if the lead is a different job from standing there for an hour.
• Setup and teardown are listed, so they aren’t a surprise loudspeaker announcement.

Tips from running this kind of sheet

1. Write what the booth costs in tickets and where the supplies will be. Leads should not be hunting for beanbags.
2. Shift the event into two waves if it is longer than 90 minutes. Feet get tired and the second hour gets sloppy.
3. Say whether siblings can play or whether volunteers are working.
4. Put a lost-child meeting spot in the description.

Starter slots

Each booth needs a lead who stays for the whole hour, plus helpers. Supplies will be in a bin with the booth name. Tickets are sold only at the front table. The button below copies these into a new sheet you can edit before anyone sees it.

• Ticket table

  Cash box with the treasurer

  4 people

• Cake walk

  Music and the number board

  3 people

• Ring toss

  Reset the bottles between kids

  3 people

• Pumpkin decorating

  Markers, not knives

  4 people

• Setup, 8:00–9:30

  Tables and bins

  8 people

• Teardown

  Everything back to the gym closet

  8 people

Questions