Special dressing up days at school - number day nightmare

[Bluebells81]

Our primary school takes part in days where the children where special clothing - today being 'Number Day'.

These are always massively stressful for my DC (9). We make a plan led by them. Sometimes I relent and buy some rubbish off Amazon that will be exactly the same as half the rest of the kids (e.g for Egyptian Day, Victorian Day etc), but generally try to avoid this and make something from what we have at home.

As day nears DC gets increasingly stressed about their outfit - generally I think they'd just rather wear school uniform every day and not have the disruption to routine. Today, yet again, we had the mother of all tantrums about their outfit and were all late for school with everyone crying. How can I make this the fun educational experience that it is supposed to be!? Or is it a nightmare for other families too?

Same here, we would even do set design for plays. All important, practical skills. How is just getting their parents to do it or buy it online and contribute to fast fashion and landfill a good idea? Schools seem to have lost the plot with this stuff honestly.

A much nicer activity for World Book Day would be to get the students to design and make their own costumes in school, maybe even setting them a challenge of making them out of recyclables or material scraps to help them understand the importance of sustainability.

Nice in theory but my kids hated wearing them let alone making them...and the sheer amount of themed/dress up days at school is out of hand

There would be less of the days if the school themselves had to actually go to the effort of teaching kids to make stuff.

Btw I'm not artistic or good at needlework but it was just a school lesson I had to get on with. Similar to my best friend who loved that sort of thing but hated English literature

Oh I agree with you there. Perhaps if the schools had to supervise the making of all these costumes they would cut back on the number of themes…

In my kids schooI I do remember some parents in YR through to Y4 lovingly making the outfits for the children, by the time they got to Y6 you could tell they thought "fuck it" and got them from Amazon instead..

Yes possibly, I think they should have a class making the aforementioned Roman/ Victorian clothes at school

My dc chose to go in uniform regardless and was much happier

If he would rather wear his uniform let him wear his uniform!

DS has always hated none uniform days so doesn’t take part. Our school always make it very clear it’s optional!

Mine are now well into secondary school but I hated the theme days. My rule was that if the costume couldn't be made with existing clothes (eg going as Matilda, or Sophie from BFG) the costume had to be based on black pyjamas (they always had a pair of those/thermals) then with face paint, artfully draped scarves, and homemade cardboard accessories (that they had to make) I could cope. They were dragons, cats, superheroes, spies- endless possibilities!
The sad thing is I now miss the excitement that they had about these days. Teenagers are rarely excited about going to school.

Just to offer a different perspective, before I retired I was a primary school teacher and absolutely hated all the many dressing up days I was required to take part in. There was pressure from the school for teachers to come up with really good costumes, or be seen as a killjoy! Not being naturally talented, I often ended up having to hire something from the local costume shop. It's definitely harder to cobble something together from scrap materials that an adult can wear (and teach in) for a whole day! Just one of many reasons why I couldn't wait to retire from teaching.....

We had years and years of this. She was diagnosed nd at 16.

However we cracked it in the end by:
Going to school in car with uniform on.
Waiting in the car until we saw kids in the same year wearing the fancy dress.
Getting changed in car and putting uniform in bag just in case.

We complained to school. They didn’t even respond.

We have these occasionally but I encourage them to find something we already have....

World book day my DC is wearing a sheep onsie from Christmas and going as Ma from Babe the Sheep pig 🤣

Our school doesnt do many days like this though.... victorian day they had to wear their school uniform but really smart with all buttons done up etc.

If your child doesn't want to dress up, I wouldn't force him.
If he does, let him choose/make the costume. Charity shops can be good sources of cheap items and sometimes sell actual costumes , although probably not for Numbers Day - who thought that one up?? I do think a schools should pull back in this a bit, I found World Book day so tedious, year after year....🫣

My autistic son just refuses to wear any special outfits. He's often the only one in normal uniform and he doesn't mind. Sometimes he wears normal casual clothes and refuses to follow the theme. Generally primary schools are quite relaxed about this sort of thing so I wouldn't put any effort in if it's stressing your kids out.

I just go “oh it’s world book day tomorrow! This is what you are wearing to school!!!” And show them the outfit, which is usually bits we have at home. If I am met with “I don’t want this, I want to be harry potter” or whatever, I tell them “this is what you are wearing, have fun! Let’s go see what your friends will wear, you can be harry potter next year”. As for the crafty mums if my son comes with comments “XYZ kid had this and that for their outfit” i reply “good for them!!”

Well, of your child doesn't want to do it and it's stressful, don't make them. Why would you put yourself through that.

Yup wait till they are older and have strong views!

Hate this one too. I was very lucky in that one DS got a birthday tshirt with 5 on it last year and one had a basketball shirt which was a bit too small tbh but worked for the day. Next week they’re having a pyjama day for ‘mental health day’. I actually think this is counterproductive, spending the day in your pyjamas makes your mental health worse but what do I know…

The year 6’s are always quite funny on world book day. A mash of football players and just normal clothing they’ll loosely claim is a character from a well known book series. WBD was just taking off when I was in year 6 I think and I went as Ellie from Jacqueline Wilson’s Girls in Love, it was literally a tank top and mini denim skirt.

Hate these days. Seem to be happening every other week now. Fuelling over-consumption with parents buying costume tat off Amazon or temu. Unless you’re a parent who is staying-at-home and crafty /can work a sewing machine…

If parents just ignored this nonsense, and sent the kids to school in normal clothes, it would stop.

Hate them all. Always a colour/theme we don't have and it is always stressful. Our school is quite relaxed, around 50% of kids don't even try - sports kit for every day. Then went they do - wear something Sporty - all we have is PE kit!!! I'd say maybe 10% of kids/parents get really into it. I hate the waste around it, and for those saying you can be creative and do it without waste. - I did for years but frankly now I really need time for other things.

I think these dressing up days are a pain in the posterior, and there are far too many of them. I wish schools would get over this.

Ours had them dressing up for Roald Dahl day and World Book day but not both in the same year. One year for World Book day they got them to wear one item from a book character - mine wore red cape as Little red riding hood but it could be doubled up for other costumes. A easy one was Sophie from the bfg - I bought round specs and she wore her nightie and carried a cucumber labelled Snozzcucumber.

No one knows why schools do these dressing up days, not even the schools themselves.