Ideas for Enhancing Your School Engagement and Fundraising

One of our incredible technology facilitators at one of our VJ schools, Southern Lehigh Middle, mentioned some truly amazing things that her school does to help further fundraising efforts and increase awareness for their Alex's Lemonade Stand efforts all year long. Thought it'd be great to share these ideas with you all to inspire you and possibly get you thinking of other ways to enhance your lemonade stand activities across disciplines and other activities in your schools.

Ideas from Tara Walter, Southern Lehigh Middle School 

Art Teacher
-- Getting students to create back drop for our Stand
--Also, hoping to get her graphic art 8th grade students to submit entries for the poster contest

Family Consumer Science
--Making lemon themed baked goods to sell during lunches with lemonade at our stand for the 2 weeks between the kick off event and wrap up. (We will actually be continuing this for the remainder of the week after the wrap up leading to our field day)

Physical Education
-- Hosting the 1st Annual Alex's Lemonade Field Day with lemon/yellow themed events. Please see below.

STEM
-- Building the Stand. The stand will be the stand for the event, but also the new stand for our sales.

Builder's Club
-- This is our service club, which supports Alex's Lemonade in addition to other foundations, that has a stand all year long at the end of the day one day a week during an activity schedule. They sell lemonade by the glass to students and teachers for 25 cents a glass.

My period 5 DESIGN 21 
-- writing script, planning, etc., for the event

TECH 
-- Taking footage to capture all events and showcase to students and for upcoming years Get coverage from local newspaper, school newspaper, and local news station, which was done in the past. 

Below are the ideas we have come up with for the 1st Annual Alex's Lemonade field Day (still a work in progress)..

*Volleyball (yellow VB)
*Tug of War (purple side---yellow side)
*Bounce Out (yellow bouncing ball, putting yellow tape around the white tennis lines, yellow decorations like streamers all along the tennis nets)
*Scooter Race (paper lemons to stick on the wall at the end)
*Kickball (yellow ball)
*Yellow sponge pass (for a relay race....pass it back and the last person empties the water in a bucket.  Or if not with water, maybe something within a relay race with a sponge?)
* Yellow hula hoops relay
* Yellow balloons for a shaving cream (too messy?)
* Lemon hunt (like an easter egg hunt concept but with lemons instead)
* Lemon toss (part of a relay race?)
* Cut lemon in half and put food dye it apparently turns the whole lemon a color?) Other ideas Builder's Club kids had:
* May 20-24 we would sell various items at the stand that STEM and Art Teacher create: during HR and activity period, sell the shoelaces, pre-wrap, bandanas...on Alexs Lemonade website there were also tattoos and lemon bandz (like silly bandz) we could also sell along with baked goods
* Donation boxes in Homerooms for lemonade. We weren't sure about if Field Day works on points earned at the games or not. But we thought that if you did, there could be a donation box all week. The amount of money plus the points earned at Field Day would determine the top winners? (Might be logistically tough!)
* Taking a picture with all of the kids in their colors by the stand
* Having various yellow food items like pineapple, bananas, lemon head candies, yellow peeps, Rita's ice, lemon ice pops etc.

2013 Theme Announced and New Optional Contests

On Thursday April 18th, the two incredible VJ teams met with MAGPI for our first planning meeting of 2013! Our outstanding VJ teams this year are Thomasville Elementary (for the kick-off) and Southern Lehigh Middle School for the wrap-up! I am over the moon excited to announce that Lexi, an 8th grade student in Southern Lehigh Middle, proposed a theme for this year of "Paradise for Patients: Raising Money for Cancer Patients to Create a Paradise for the Future (Our Tomorrow)." The two VJ teams took a vote and unanimously voted on this as our theme for 2013!!

Please consider incorporating this theme into your lemonade stand and/or optional activities. And, speaking of optional activities, how cool is it that we had several new optional activities that were also proposed for this year including the following: 

Social Media Contest (optional)

Because social media is such a huge part of our lives now we're incorporating this NEW social media contest into this year's event. Now you can use social media and post photos of your school getting ready for their stand, holding their stand, or participating in the live videoconference events and then be sure to tag them with the hashtag #avls2013 and @alexslemonade. The top 5 photos with the most "likes' or shares on instagram, pinterest, twitter, and facebook will be our winning photos and will be highlighed in a special photo gallery! Spread the good word of your school's fundraising efforts far and wide using your social media channels! Remember to tag your photos with #avls2013 so we can find them.

Lemonade Stand Flair Contest (optional)
This optional contest was the suggestion of one of our great VJ team students from Southern Lehigh Middle School who suggested we have a contest for the best decorated Lemonade Stand! Use your imagination and of course make it stand out and attract people to your stand. Stands will be judged based on this Find out more and check out the judging rubric.

Make a Difference Commercial Deadline Extension
The deadline for the optional Make A Difference Commercial Contest has been extended to Friday May 3rd. Please send your commercials to Jennifer by Friday May 3rd for consideration. See the project website for full details.

Welcome to our 2013 Alex's VIRTUAL Lemonade Stand Project Schools!!

We are thrilled to kick-off the 2013 Alex's Virtual Lemonade Stand project and proud to introduce our thirteen schools. They are:

Southern Lehigh Middle School, Center Valley, PA
Moreland Hills Elementary, Pepper Pike, OH
Schuylkill Elementary School, Phoenixville, PA
CLSD, Lebanon, PA
Liberty Bell Elementary School, Coopersburg, PA
National Dali High School, Dali City, Taiwan
Marcus Hook Elementary School. Marcus Hook, PA
Montana School for the Deaf and Blind, Great Falls, MT
Hallowell Elementary, Horsham PA
Thomasville Primary School, Thomasville, NC
Liberty Drive Elementary School, Thomasville, NC
Ridgway Area School District, Ridgway, PA
East Noble School Corporation, Kendallville IN
Sarah W. Starkweather Elementary School, West Chester, PA

It's going to be a fantastic event! We're so happy that you are all joining the efforts to raise money and awareness to help end childhood cancers one cup at a time...