Country 5-H Fair

Who: Everyone, all ages!
Objective: Mingle, Display Talents, Learn about Preparedness and Home Storage
Budget: $125

Flyer:

Set-Up: We had sign up sheets on the bulletin board for about 3 weeks and had all sorts of categories. In the gym we set up tables with signs for each category. We had a ticket booth when they entered. The “food tent” was set up in the YW room and the bishopric and their wives were assigned the task of grilling the hot dogs and manning the food booth. Each ticket was redeemed for one hot dog. This was purely to help people only take one hot dog until we knew everyone had been served. The tickets also added to the ambiance of the fair. The food tickets were actually from a roll of over 1000 tickets I bought over a year ago at the D.I. (thrift store) for 25 cents.

Categories: Butter-Scuplting (they brought their finished product, and 1 person even did the Bountiful Temple), Cake decorating, Artwork, Handi-crafts (sewing, crocheting, needlework, etc), canned goods, baked goods, and anything else you could think of. Kids could sign up for leap frog contests and ice cream eating contests. We also had a "booth" for our emergency preparedness person and our RS Food Storage specialist.

Turn-Out:The entries were not compared against each other, but rather scored based on skills, talents and creativity. We printed off blue ribbons and red ribbons for Excellent Work and Good Work. Everyone who entered received a ribbon. The judges also nominated a “Best in Show” for each category and awarded that with a purple ribbon. The kids loved the Ice Cream Eating Contests and the Leap Frog Competition. In the food tent we had a bins filled with plain potato chips and another filled with cookies. We also served 10 gallons of homemade rootbeer, and included water pitchers on the tables. The chips, cookies and rootbeer were a “serve-yourself” style. It was nice to have the “food tent” as people could eat when they were ready and it kept the food away from the art entries. Everyone who came said they absolutely loved it. Some of the most creative entries came out the butter sculpting and cake decorating competitions. We also had our Emergency Preparedness Specialists set up a booth with a sample 72 hr kit and handouts on food storage and natural disasters.

We ended up buying 13 pkgs of hot dogs (104), 13 pkgs of buns (104), 5 lg bags of plain potato chips, 6 pkgs cookies, 10 lbs sugar, 10 lbs dry ice, 2 bottles root beer extract, 1.5 gal ice cream (should have doubled it), 1 Hershey syrup. Because I found the hot dogs and buns on sale, I was able to also buy 2 cans whipped topping and 2 large bags of buttered popped corn, which we served in paper sacks. The kids loved having their own popcorn bags.

We had about 90 people show up.

Sock Hockey

Who: Adults
Objective: Sportsmanship, mingle,
Budget: $20 for chips, salsa and nacho cheese.
Flyer:

Set-Up: Outlined goals with duct tape on the floors and walls of opposite ends of gym.

Special Instructions: Split up into teams, and using a balled up pair of white socks, played Hockey. We used very simple rules. Try to get the sock into your team's goal. We played until everyone was tired. We had a non-player keep score, while another was "referee" (basically, dropped the "puck" and then told us if it went out of bounds, etc.)

Turn-Out: The weather wasn't so great, and there ended up being a big community event that night in which we had to compete, so there was only a handful of people (15 or so) that came. Nonetheless, it was still fun.

King of Hearts UN-Pageant

Who: Everyone, All Ages
Objective: Promote camaraderie & family fun.
Budget: $100 (for dipping chocolate)
Flyer:

Set-Up: Starting 2-3 weeks ahead of time, we put nomination boxes in the foyer. We told everyone to nominate their favorite "King" ages 16+. We had a good number of nominations. I also sent around a sign-up sheet in RS for the chocolate dipping bar. We had people sign up to bring: cake bits, pretzels, marshmallows, orange slices, strawberries, pineapple chunks, apples slices, bananas, graham crackers, gummi bears, wafers, shortbread cookies, macaroons, and anything else you could think of to dip in chocolate.

Activity: On the night of the activity, we drew names from the nomination box and called up 6 contestants. The contestants competed in various (see below), and in between segments we had “messages from our sponsors”. These were little 30 second “commercials” put on by some of the youth. They were hilarious. Following the competitions we allowed voting. There were paper sacks which were numbered 1-6 that corresponded with the numbers we had pinned to the contestants. As each person came to the activity, they were given a small tab of paper. These were their voting tabs. So, they simply put their tab into the bag of the person they voted for. But we told them instead of voting for the BEST king, they were to vote for the WORST king, since it was an UN-Pageant. This made it even more fun. We had 2 members of the committee tally the votes.

The winner was “crowned” with a crown, which was made and donated by a committee member. They were also given a trophy that was found at a thrift store for about 50 cents. The little kids enjoyed the coloring table (set up in the back with photocopied "Valentine Coloring Pages") which kept them busy. Everyone loved the chocolate fountain. We had left over chocolate which we will use as chocolate sauce for next months activity.

Events/Competition: I was the "pageant host" and asked another member of the ward to provide the "pageant music". He played some on the piano and some on CD, and made it apropos to the competition event. Ahead of time I wrote out a script of what I would be saying and gave the music person a copy so he could coordinate. I also recruited 3-4 YW who came dressed in formal gowns to be the "Vanna Whites" and assist on stage.

Areas of competition were:

• Sportsmanship - Jousting (skateboards & pool noodles)
• Physical Fitness - Hymnbook Weights Challenge
• Coordination - Dance Competition (30 second moves)
• Intellect & Quick-Thinking - Interview Question

Turn-Out: We had about 100 people come and everyone said it was a lot of fun.

Here are the contestants right after being called up on stage.