Dear Members of the Grady Elementary Community,

Thank you for your attendance at the Grady Elementary Family Night at PDQ and for buying doughnuts from the fifth graders.  Both events were very successful.

Grady’s Fall Festival is coming up on October 18, 2103 from 5 pm until 7:30 pm on campus. The Fall Festival is for the whole family and non-Grady siblings/family members are welcome to participate. 

There will be carnival style games, two bounce houses, an obstacle course and booths made by our Grady teachers with lots of fun activities, including hair and face painting.   Admission to the event is free and tickets for each game/activity are $1 (children under the age of 2 are welcome to play the games for free, but will not receive prizes because of choking concerns).  A comprehensive map of the campus, a list of the names of the booths and activities, and pictures of the two awesome bounce houses and one amazing inflatable obstacle course are each attached to this email in PDF documents. We are pre-selling wristbands for unlimited games, bounces, activities, snow cones and popcorn and one ticket to the photo booth for $20 for the first wristband and $15 for each additional wristband.  An order form for the wristbands will be coming home in backpacks this week.  Simply fill out the form and return it with the payment in your child’s homework folder.   You will receive email confirmation of your wristband purchase.  Wristbands will not come home in backpacks.  Rather, pick up wristbands the night of the event at the PTA ticket booth near the cafeteria.

This year the teachers are outdoing themselves with multiple booths that include colored hairspray, nails, face paint, tattoos, muffin tin toss, edible bracelets, lollipop booth, Guess the amount of candies in a jar booth, duck pond, bowling, corn hole, creepy crawly feel box,  etc.  In sum, there will be a lot of different activities at the Fall Festival.  To donate prizes (unopened McDonald’s toys, left over birthday party goody bag stuffers, etc), tattoos  or nail polish for the nail painting booth, please bring these items to the front office.  There is a box in the front office for collection of prizes, tattoos and nail polish.

When you get hungry, we will have a grill station for hot dogs, chips and drinks, which will be $1 each.  If you just want a snack, we will have snow cones and popcorn (unlimited snow cones and popcorn are included in each wristband purchase). There will also be a bake sale (accepting donations) put on by the fifth grade and vendor booths, including Silly Dilly Tot Spot (http://www.sillydillytotspot.com/), which will be raffling off $750 of items from its store.  Silly Dilly Raffle tickets are 1 for $3 or 2 for $5 and the raffle tickets will be for sale at the Silly Dilly booth.  A list of the items that Silly Dilly will be raffling off is also contained in an attached PDF file.   Come and join the fun and please spend at least 30 minutes volunteering in one of the booths.  A volunteer form will be coming home in backpacks this week. For any questions about this event or to volunteer, please contact [email protected].  See you at 5 pm on October 18, 2013.  

We have more wonderful news to share about sponsors.  House of Huckleberry, in Honor of Bear Nicola, is a Leader of the Pack Sponsor, Carson Boyd is a Bengal Sponsor and Hoffman Realty – South Tampa (http://www.hoffmanrealty.com/), in Honor of Ian and Erin Dougill, is a Tiger Partner!  Thank you very much, House of Huckleberry, Carson Boyd and Hoffman Realty – South Tampa for your generous support of our school. 

Grady Elementary is getting a new website on October 18, 2013.  The new mobile-friendly website contains extensive information about Grady Elementary and will allow you to search information such as newsletters and directly access Edsby and our online yearbook store. 

Please start sending in your Box Tops for Education.  We are collecting box tops now and the first box top submission deadline is October 18, 2013. When submitting box tops please clip them neatly and place them in plastic Ziploc bags with a maximum of 50 box tops in each bag.  Please place a slip of paper inside each Ziploc with your child’s name and the number of box tops in the bag. Please send the bags of box tops to school in your child’s homework folder.  Please contact Box Top Coordinator, Amy Jarman, at [email protected] with any questions.

We still need a family night coordinator to contact local businesses interested in giving back to our school and organize Grady family nights at those businesses.  If interested, please contact PTA President, Damaris Allen, at [email protected]

We hope to see you at the Fall Festival.  Please contact Ellen Lyons by return email with any questions.

Sincerely,

Grady Elementary PTA