Holiday Performance Survival Guide
5 Ways to Stress Less During Holiday Performance Frenzy
Dance recitals. choir and band concerts, theatrical productions... ‘tis the season for rehearsals, shows, and after-parties! How do you keep it all organized, especially as the parent of multiple children in multiple performances? We’ll show you how with these five holiday life hacks – you’ve got this!
1. Organize, organize, organize: Or have SignUp do the organizing for you! Create a (free) online SignUp sheet for each performance, including rehearsal dates and times. Send invitations to other parents whose children are involved and ask them to sign up for carpooling, snack duty, or volunteering backstage – no participant registrations required, they just simply sign up to help! SignUp provides automated reminders and real-time calendar syncing so you don’t have to keep track of it all in your head, and eliminates the endless email threads discussing schedules. Get started now or see a free demo!
2. Multi-task: Use the time you spend waiting at rehearsals to write your holiday cards, to plan party menus, and/or to do your holiday and grocery shopping online. Most of the major retailers now have apps that make shopping easier than ever. AND, if you start your shopping at a site like ebates.com, you can earn cash back.
3. Plan for Emergencies: The day of the performance is not the time to have to send people out for emergency supplies. Compile an emergency kit as you come across items you’ll most likely need on show day. Fill it with nutrition bars, bottled water, bobby pins, hair spray, make-up essentials, band-aids, a travel sized sewing kit, baby wipes, extra tights, clear nail polish, safety pins – and bring enough to share!
4.Thank everyone! Take up a collection for the director and assistant director of your event and present a gift card along with a bouquet of flowers on opening night. (Use SignUp to collect the needed funds!) Bring flowers for your own child (and bring a few extra for parents who forgot.) Handwrite thank you notes to the other parents who worked so diligently to help pull off a successful holiday event – a small expression of thanks is often a tremendous motivator to volunteer again next year!
5.Make a memory: Before the big event, recruit volunteers to video record the event or take photographs to later be compiled into a slideshow – then share with helpers and attendees.
After all the hard work and planning, don’t forget to soak in the magic. That’s your kid up there!
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