The rains stopped and the sun shined down on this year’s fabulous Octoberama.
We all love the games, food, music and silent auction, but Octoberama is so much more. Our carnival brings families together to enjoy friendships and celebrate what we all love about our school. On behalf of the entire Mathews community, I want to recognize Ivanna Kern’s fantastic leadership as this year’s Octoberama Chair. Her family went above and beyond when Doug Kern took on the tremendous task of organizing the silent auction along with Tim Tierney. As a member of the Octoberama team I saw first hand everyone’s contributions to creating this spectacular event. Emily Johnson revamped all the the game booths. Marion Cimbala organized all the food vendors. I worked with the UT volunteer groups. Cristina Mauro sorted and organized thousands of prizes. Jason Pinchback gave us another great musical lineup. Debbie Seal doubled booth sponsorship. Monica Tornoe helped all the classrooms with their gift baskets. Shannon MItchell brought her artistic know-how to the mosaic bench project Marcus Siller did another great year of set-up and lay-out. Paola Ferate took on organizing tickets and did a great job. Marcia Tugendhat kept track of all the money. Ruthann Rushing helped with just about everything. Thank you to this wonderful team and to an entire school community for all your contributions of volunteer time, cakes, prizes, gift basket items, silent auction donations and support of Mathews Elementary. Octoberama is our school’s largest fundraising event and enables our PTA to provide classroom equipment and learning materials, field trips and enrichment programs for the benefit of all the students at Mathews! Thank you from Elizabeth Breston, PTA Co-President.
Recipe for Octoberama
1 Excellent Octoberama chair- 15 Committee Chairs
- 2 Silent Auction Chairs
- 11 Silent auction team members
- 22 Game booths
- 4 Inflatables
- 100 Mathews parents staffing booths
- 15 Mathews parents selling tickets
- 20 Mathews parents to set up and clean up
- 103 UT and community volunteers
- 200 Cakes
- 23 Homeroom parents
- 1 Entire school community donating items
- 1,000+ Prizes collected and organized
17 Booth sponsors- 5 Festival sponsors
- 1 Treasurer tracking all the financials
- 4 Custodial staff
- 5 Food vendors
- 1 Guitar Hero truck
- 341 Silent auction items
- 380 Mathews children making mosaic benches
- 7 Musical acts
- 5 Mathews staff members doing a bit of everything
Simmer for five months, then full boil for one month.
When the timer rings, serve and enjoy.
