Top Tips for Running a Santa's Grotto, Toys to You

Top Tips for Running a Santa's Grotto

Top Tips for Organising your Santa's Grotto
First of all Christmas is a hectic time for all of us not least of all those of us who organise and stage a Santa's Grotto to surprise and please the children at school, nursery or pre-school.
My top tips are:

Keep It Simple
Yes children are impressed by gorgeous fairy lights, spectacular settings, reindeer and fake snow, but who has time to source, organise and create all these special effects. And reindeer are almost guaranteed to poo on the floor of the Grotto. Do you want to be the person who draws the cleaning up short straw? I know I wouldn't!!
Children are over the moon with a simple setting so long as Father Christmas is there and he has a gift for them kids will be delighted. And when you make the children happy, you make the parents happy too.

Keep it Affordable
Affordable can also be impressive. You don't need to spend a fortune on stage setting your Grotto. As I mentioned above, kids want to see Father Christmas and get a gift, that's all that matters to them.
If you are going to create a setting consider getting PTA members involved to do some setting painting. It's easy to paint some MDF into a fab Santa's Grotto and if you do it one year and store it somewhere safe it's there to use year after year.
Santa needs a simple chair and a couple of Santa sacks or to keep it even cheaper you could consider gift wrapping a couple of cardboard boxes to keep the presents in.
To help santa along you can even colour code them: blue paper for boys, red for girls.

Fundraising Grotto's
If you are organising a Grotto for your child's school or nursery you will no doubt want to raise funds from it.
It is okay to charge for visits to Father Christmas.
Shopping centres and department stores charge upwards of £3.50 (usually it's substantially more) so you can quite happily charge £1.50 to see Father Christmas and get a gift.
You could also get a parent or teacher to come along with a digital camera. They can then take pictures of the kids with Santa and you can sell them, take orders on the day and give them out once they're printed. Digital images can be printed very cheaply now often costing just 5p per picture at some places. You can then sell them on at a reasonable profit.

Gifts from Santa
Again you dont' have to spend a fortune on these. My local school didn't give toys as gifts they gave oatmeal in a little plastic bag, tied with ribbon. This oatmeal had a little tag which read: "A present for Rudolph, put this out on Christmas Eve for Rudolph and his friends." A great and inexpensive way to give the kids something. It may involve a little bit more work but it's definately innovative!
Or you could buy toys from Toys to You where you'll find Santa Grotto toys from only 30p. And if you buy your toys from us we'll throw in free gift wrap and colour coding to save you time and money.

full santa grotto toy range

We even offer a range of green wooden toys that don't harm the environment. These toys start from only 80p and again have the advantage of our great free giftwrap and colour coding service. These toys have a high perceived value by parents and when giving these toys you can happily charge a bit more for entrance to the Grotto.

full santa grotto toy range

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