you should've heard those knocked out jailbirds sing...

Several weeks ago, one of the teachers stood up at a faculty meeting and announced that PES would be having a their first annual Harvest Festival. Teachers could have booths in the rooms on Safari (4th grade) Hall. The tickets they collected could be turned in for REAL money. Considering my budget is exactly zero dollars and zero cents, I KNEW that this was something I had to do. I looked online for booth ideas, asked teachers for ideas, and racked my own brain for things I remember doing at the good ol' Fall Festival at Duck Samford. Nothing struck my fancy until the T man suggested a jail. We both remembered having a jail at Wrights Mill Road during 'Family Fun Night' and we both remembered thinking it was pretty cool. So with a little hesitation, I made this my plan.

I knew I wanted to have some kind of bars in front of my door and wanted to some how make my room look like a jail. I also tried to think of some kind of activity for the prisoners to do, but I figured they wouldn't be in there for long, so there was really no point.

So the Sunday before the festival, we (meaning mostly Tyson) got to work. I don't know what I would do without his help sometimes. He's going to make a fabulous teacher's husband :)

We went to Lowes and bought everything we needed for approximately $6.00. We measured, marked, drilled, and screwed until we came up with something like this...

When I got back to Prattville, I painted it black and attached it to my door with wire. It actually turned out looking pretty good!  I also hot glued black plastic sheeting on my walls. Ummm let's just say that I should have just stuck with the bars. I charged one ticket to throw somebody in jail and one ticket to bail them out. I should have charged 2, but I wanted to be safe-mental note for next time.

For some reason, the jail was an absolute hit! I kind of felt like I was babysitting, but for the money it raised, I won't complain. Kids were throwing their parents in, throwing themselves in, and then not wanting to leave. Another mental note-I should have stuck with the activity idea. Most of these kids were running around like a bunch of banshees. I even dressed up like a police woman. Well, really I was just a normal looking person with some police-like accesories.

So I ended up raising $190.

That's exactly umm...well, $190 more than I started with. I'm not sure how well the other booths did, but I was pretty proud. Despite the exhaustion at the end of the night and the concern that I might have a law suit on my hands with all these crazy children running around, I had a pretty good night. I also enjoyed it because it gave me a chance to get to know some of the kids better. I feel like it's all business when they come to my class because I only get them for 45 minutes a week. Once I get to know them, the general concensus is that they're not quite the varmints that I suspect them to be.