Start organizing carnivals and other related events in your community especially if your community attracts tourists and visitors on a regular basis especially if you are good with organizing events. If your events are well packaged, you can successfully get financial support and sponsorship deals from your local government, corporate organizations that operate within your community and from individuals who are interested in the event you intend organizing.
The organizer sells tickets participants can use to play games. Participants trade tickets to play a game. If they win they are given tokens or stamps. The tokens or stamps can be cashed in for prizes. Participants may also trade their tickets for select food items
Steps for the organize carnivals
- Establish where the carnival will be. A local park, a business parking lot, a church yard, a school or other community building are all good choices.
- Decide which games you will offer. Build, borrow or purchase your games. Decide how many tickets each game will cost.
- Decide how winners will keep track of their winnings for redemption at the prize table. You might provide participants with a piece of paper that gets stamped each time they win or hand them a token each time they win. The stamped paper or tokens are turned in at the prize table for prizes
- Prize table – group prizes according to how many tokens/stamps they cost and clearly mark sections of a table with the amount , Participants bring their tokens/stamps to the prize table and trade them for prizes.
A group of volunteers to help on the day of the carnival. You will need volunteers in the following areas:
- 2 people at each game
- 3-4 people at the prize table
- 2-3 people to sell tickets
List of Games and Events
Tattoo Booth
A variety of cute, even romantic, tattoos are available at a variety of prices. The inexpensive tattoos resemble cartoon drawings.
Nail Decal Booth
This operates much like the Tattoo booth, in fact, it could easily be combined with a Tattoo Booth. But be careful, it requires a little time to apply ten decals, so have plenty of volunteers available for this one. There are sufficient numbers of nail decals on a card to apply to 6 or seven pairs of hands! Charging one ticket per hand (or foot) or one ticket per pair of hands or feet would provide a good return.
Hair Striping Booth
A favorite! Fluorescent pinks, oranges, greens, yellows and blues are available in washable hair sprays. So are jet black, white and silver and other standard colors.
Balloon Booth
If one or two volunteers have success using “sculptor” balloons, their talents are always a hit with all ages. Although one ticket is usually sufficient to recover costs, we suggest that two 25 cent tickets be charged for this service. Available for those volunteers who always wanted to learn the tricks of creating animals or hats out of balloons.
School Jail
Students can have their principal, teacher or parent put in jail for the price of a ticket or two. They must stay in the custody of the Carnival Police for at least a minute or two and until a ticket is offered for their bail. The jail can be made up using carnival pennants or police tape.
Duck Pond
This is offered in a kit form including a three foot inflatable pool and a dozen floating plastic ducks. Just add water. Mark the bottoms of the ducks with numbers 1 through 12 or color the bottom.
Fish Pond
Suspend a shower curtain from a wooden dowel or board. The curtain should be a darker color and not transparent. If it has an ocean theme, all the better. One or two volunteers hide in a blind, behind the curtain. String or ribbon is attached to old fishing poles.
Soda Can Game
Set up six empty soda cans, pyramid fashion, on a 12 by 12 inch wood platform. Let the kids throw two or three bean bags and try to knock all the cans completely off the platform. It would be a good idea to enclose the booth or game area with chicken wire or netting,
Basketball Toss
A regulation size 18 inch inside diameter basketball goal is all this game requires. Your throwing distance should be from between 8 and 12 feet. Be sure to post a sign limiting the number of times a player can win.
