So DS1's school is celebrating the rather random pointlessness that is Sport Aid this Friday by allowing children to come into school dressed in 'sports kit'. Or P.E. kit. They are not, as far as I know, doing anything actually sporty in their kit. They aren't running round the playground 5 times for sponsorship or anything. Just wearing 'sports kit', and being asked to 'donate at least £1 to this worthy cause'. 
I'm a bit stink-eyed about the constant calls to donate to charities that I'm not choosing to patronise, IYSWIM, but hey, it's a quid, we aren't asked to more than about 5 times in a school year and I can afford it. (I hate hate hate the idea that families who can't afford it are being asked to choose between compromising family finances and humiliating their children, though. 
)
What I'm a bit hacked off with this time is that unlike 'wear mufti for PTA funds, pay a quid' or 'wear spotty clothes for CIN day, pay a quid' (large coloured 'dot' stickers over normal clothes!), this is sports-themed. If DS1 doesn't possess an over-priced, slippery nylon footy top (and he doesn't, he isn't remotely bothered about football at the moment), then he has to go in his P.E. kit. Apart from anything else, it's likely to be bloody freezing on Friday. I wouldn't be sending him in wearing school shorts, and they're a lot longer than the P.E. shorts he has. Is he going to get teased for not having a football top? I mean, that sort of singling-out wouldn't even be an issue if the school weren't forcing it here.
AIBU to be pissed off about this? It seems a really lazy way of 'celebrating' (or 'marking the event' as the head has it) a rather piss-poor celebrity vehicle charity thing, there is no actual sports involved, and he's likely to be teased because he doesn't have the right gear. And will freeze his arse off.
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Pointless Sport Aid clothing day. Anyone else's school do this?
MeAndMySpoon · 19/03/2014 12:09
Um, I just checked and all his tracksuit trousers are now way too small. 
(He wears cords, combat trousers, that sort of thing.) No, he doesn't have trainers exactly, he has some Clarks dinosaur shoes that are sort of trainersy. He really isn't sporty, he wears those for tearing around and basically anything outdoors that doesn't requite either wellies or crocs! He seems to manage fine without trainers. Maybe I'd better get him some joggers anyway.
Nope, he doesn't do outdoor PE apart from in summer term and then they wear t-shirt and shorts, same as indoor PE. He's in year 1, I'm not sure but I suspect the KS2 lot do outdoor PE year-round. So no, joggers and a hooded top aren't already part of his PE kit. He has plenty of hoodies and non-school aertex shirts.
It's more the fact that all they're doing is putting on sports gear, and that's it. Just seems a bit pointless.
That sounds a bit more involved, OddBoots. Looking at the letter, I see it says it will tie in to a day with a company that comes round and does PE days (I think they're touting for business, as if there's enough interest they will run an after-school club doing TAG rubgy or something), though letter doesn't explicitly say it's on the same day as Sport Aid. I may be frothing unnecessarily. 
Sadly, BirdyBedtime, there are a handful of little s*ds in DS1's class who have bullied him, and other children, in the past, and I really don't want to give them a pretext. School knows and tries to arrange things so that the worst offender doesn't have access to DS1. It's a bit of an ongoing issue TBH. 
Luckily ds has PE on Friday, so will go in as per usual in his grey tracksuit bottoms and school PE sweatshirt.
They are marking it by wearing odd socks. The request is for the children to wear differently coloured socks.
But there is a range of sport on offer for all the children that day! The info sheet makes the day look like almost a mini sports day.
Odd socks thing might be Downs Syndrome Awareness Day? DS2 is going in with odd socks and a quid to preschool, if I can remember. He is supremely unbothered by clothing and will probably not even notice he's wearing odd socks!
So do I need to change the direction of my needless frothing and aim it at the fact that DS1's school doesn't do outdoor sport at KS1? God, I hated outdoor PE, but then I'm a lazy person who dislikes sport generally. (can you tell yet?) And I don't want DS1 to be like me in that respect.
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