To suspect a causal relationship between effing World Book Day and family breakdown?

[Blu]

Long. No soplogies - I need to get this off my chest!
DS has a perfect Willy Wonka outfit. He decided last week that on no account would he go to school as WW and insisted that he wanted to go as a dinosaur from his dinosaur encyclopaedia. With sinking heart I agreed and did my best to rise to the occasion.
Bought tubular dishcloth roll from Halfords.
Spent Sunday with DS painting it all with brown and green dinosaur skin design.

Got up at 5.30 a.m (after late work meetings last night and Monday night). Struggled to sew it all together - tubular body, sleeves with carboard claws made by DS, tail, stuffed with slightly inflated Tesco bags to give bulk without drag-it-down weight. Ruched the tail up by sewing along it, giving it a pleasing upward curl.

DO comes in and makes coffee, muttering about why don't I reduce my hours and concentrate on parenting a bit more.

DS puts on outfit - it looks much better than I imagined it could.

DS gets out onto the doorstep to leave for schol. Stops. "I don't think I really want to go as any sort of character".

DP tells him he looks good, DS is adamant and starts to take off Authentic Iguanadon outfit.

DP whisks him upstairs and returns 5 seconds later with blue IKEA knight cape and Narnia book.

"He's going as Peter or Edmund from Narnia".

We stomp off to school. 4 other boys are in IKEA knight outfits. No-one has anyhting half as good as an anatomically correct home-made Iguanadon.

I return home with the intention of putting DS into care, divorcing DP, sending a letterbomb to the HQ of World effing Book Day, and committing myself to a mental health establishment for treatment of the effcts of these initiatives on anyone who is a WOHP, single parent, SAHM with smaller children in the home to care for, SN children to care for or anyone even slightly creatively challenged.

This year WBD was fab at our school, the theme was favourite bedtime stories. All the kids had to come in their pyjamas

The only problem I had was getting them to change from the ones they wore last night into a clean pair this morning (and DH had to do that!)

All the kids dressed up, as did the teachers DH went into school and read Eosops fables to them at assembly (In his dressing gown) and then worked with the lower juniors all day to help them create their own fables in stories and mini plays.

Next week he is going back to woork with teh upper junior and do the Jabberwocky

Last week he worked with the infants on chinese new year and stories around that!!

DH is an actor/storyteller so is trained in this sort of thing Needs to be with that lot

We get away with this in Wales as 1st March is St David's Day so there are the traditional costumes for girls and boys.
We go to concerts and make daffodils!
Though my DD had to do all the Eisteddfordd stuff and make a collage and Dress a Leek!!!
It's lovely, boyo!!

My ds has modelled himself om the Big Boy Cousins from Katie Morag's Island Stories ever since he was three.
He's going to school as a punky thug looking Hector complete with biro-ed earring tomorrow and will no doubt be extra naughty to live up to his character

DD's school didn't really do it - she got a token and a list of books it could buy in her book bag. DS's pre-school wanted the full dressing up kaboodle so we (I) decided he should go as the boy in "Pass The Jam, Jim". I cut out pink felt jam splodges and stuck them to his t shirt and joggers and labelled a little bottle JAM.
This morning he put on the clothes and the PVA glue cracked and pinged off a jam splat every time he bent his knees or elbows. AND we have to take DD to school before we reach pre-school so I was resigned to him being jam-free upon arrival. I took a stapler and needle and cotton with me, and in the pre-school waiting room, first tried to staple jam blobs to my son's trousers (muttering "KEEP STILL") and then resorted to sewing them onto him (even more frantic "KEEP STILL"s).

Can he come to our school? Was rather pleased with my own efforts today - cobbled together but hey, DD2 was happy. Must admit, actually having some storytelling going on in school seems better...

Our school did the big dressing up thing last year - competition, with a prize for each class - tried to pick the most imaginative, but ones that had evidence of input from the kids.
But what the children actually remembered & talked about was the paired reading - we paired up Y6 with Y4, & Y5 with Y3 & each child brought in their favourite book & they read/talked about it to their partner - so this year, we just did that & did it for longer because we didn't have the massive fancy dress parade in assembly.
I went round taking pictures & there were some amazing discussions going on.

I painted my son green at 6.30 this morning, so he could be the witch of the west.

i think he still has green bits in his ears. he may be green forever.

I have Harry Potter sitting in my front room waiting to go to school.

He begged to go as a thunderbird, but apart from annuals at xmas, I have not ever seen a thundebird book.

Lucy and Peter from Narnia left my house this mornin.

The 10 year old Lucy did try one last ditch effort to cause strife by complaining about the accuracy of her outfit (fake fur, what more does the child expect??????)

Mummy calmy pointed out that mummy had thought up the out fit and put it all together and that child had done nothing to help, so hard ched!

Thunderbirds books DH has them all!

Our Harry Potter caused a bit of a stir last night before his swimming lesson, when he stepped into the shower and all the black food colouring in his hair streamed off his body and along the drain. Thought we'd have been banned from future lessons if he'd gone straight into the pool and dyed it black! His hair is now a subtle shade of burgundy but am trying not to draw too much attention to that as he'll think his hair is pink.

I sympathise with all of you who have had this ''dressing up'' nightmare. I wish schools would realise that parents in the 21st century simply don't have the time (or in my case the needlework skills) to make costumes - especially costumes up to the exacting and capricious standards set by 5-7 year olds.
Luckily for us, this year our school is marking the occasion with a sponsored read over the next 4 weeks, taking the focus off clothing and onto the whole point - READING !! (Mind you the whole sponsorship thing is a bit of a pain when you live nowhere near your relatives.)

oh tissy 3 years ago when my DD has in reception all the girls in the class except one) went as snow white even the teacher, it was soooooooooo funny to watch!

PMSL Batters.

I am now twitching with indignation! yes the school turned it into a damn competition - there is a lovely ethos, generally, of no comeptition...but the only competitive things are things which, usually, DS has no hope of winning. Because they are all 'homework for parents' things, like huge half-term art projects and gratuitous outbreaks of fancy dress, or 'attendance' and DS's numerous absences for orthotics and physio appointments are counted as absenses, or sports day - which DS cannot possibly win.

So yesterday, the winner in DS's class was a boy (a very lovely boy, DS's friend, no bitterness about the boy winning) dressed as Dorothy Dinosaur from the Wiggles (thus demonstrating the whole event's relevance to the appreciation of fine literature...), wearing an inside out padded hulk outfit and a woolly hat. DS would have won had he worn his lovingly (well, tetchily) crafted Iguanadon outfit!

He did say to me yesterday teatime 'But well done, Mummy, for making such a good costume' in a rather patronising tone which I recognised as mine.

I am Iguanadon, Hear Me Roar!

snort at Mimizan

He did say to me yesterday teatime 'But well done, Mummy, for making such a good costume' in a rather patronising tone which I recognised as mine.

LOL! I can't bear having my patronising tones used against me.

For our world book day (which happened in September, we must be in a different time zone here or something) the prizes went to the costumes most obviously made by the children themselves - dd2 (5) won a prize for the Captain Hook costume she had spent all week constructing out of cardboard and tin foil and crepe paper. The teacher told me they can always spot the child-made ones.

Blu - I spent hours making a bloody Barbar outfit - tail, nose, flappy ears, bow tie the works.

The children had to parade together down the road to big carnival meeting place and then march up and down in front of proud parents.

To my horror I spotted ds. Five years old, dressed head to toe as Barbar - with a bloody plastic imitation Kalashnikov rifle pilched from the charity shop when I wasn't looking (I was looking for bloody Barbarish bow ties) and smuggled home and then to school.......

Some bloody witty father pointed out ds and said "Hey - It's Barbar - The Revenge".

The autobiograpy idea is sheer genius.

Sent dd in hermetically sealed into her costume and it became apparant that she stood very little chance of actually being able to go to the toilet all day.

I waved her into school with the timely advice 'Don't drink anything today will you.'

I love the Barbar with the kalashnikov. these stories are so great I'm almost looking forward to it next year. I might have got the hang of it by then.

PMSL at gun-toting Babar aol and at being patronised by your own child!

PMSL Blu.