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?

I found number day easy until this year, just give them a white t-shirt ( last year’s PE t-shirt works well) and some sharpies to add as many numbers as they like.
This year DD decided she was going to dress as a calculator as she wanted to win the bloody prize for best costume. To her credit she mostly did it herself after I found a suitably large box, and I was pleased she did actually win as there were some in costumes that were clearly made entirely by the parents.

Double sided tape or sellotape rolled over on itself to stick on cut out numbers or sounds? Print out a copy of the front cover of a book and stick it to a tshirt or even on your normal uniform? I made our entire staff into a box of crayons by asking them what colour top they had. Making them a black oblong with the words crayon on it in roughly the colour they had and they pinned it on. They had a matching cone hat too. It doesn't have to be perfect!

I've never even heard of numbers day.

I am pleased my school only ever does "dress as you like" days. So for e.g. World book day, they can wear a costume, but also PJs, PE kit, normal/play clothes or uniform. And they only do it once or twice per year. My kids normally just wear onsies.

I love the idea of getting the school to organise it as part of a lesson! I think my DC would enjoy that much more.
In the SW we can't just 'pop to Primark'... Everything has to be bought online or made.
I just hate the wasteful aspect of buying something cheap to be worn once! I guess I'll have to get more organised on vinted.

I bought a plain tshirt and a pen for number day my eldest got to the point where he would refuse non uniform days and go in anyway my youngest is still game he is at a special school so they still do them more than our local secondary

I'd do vinted if you want to avoid amazon, it'll mean your dc can fit in with their friends and you don't have to create a masterpiece. I just bought one for Alice in wonderland for a couple of pounds and it's probably only been worn once or twice. I wonder if your child is stressed because you're making it into a big deal and developing really different and fancy costumes at home, and then others are just wearing a football shirt or an amazon costume, so they stand out.
Also, if you have a class WhatsApp, find out what others are doing and then you can reassure your child that they'll be the same as their friends.

They were allowed to dress up as rockstars. Mine wore party clothes today for number day.

You should be arguing that the school should not be encouraging low use clothing use and waste. Contact the school and make your views known.

We had numbers day recently- we got old sweatshirts that were on their way out fit and condition wise and decorated them with felt tips to fit the theme.

I live in the SW and Charity shops are your friend. Even my little town has three. I bought a " brand new" Christmas jumper for DS 2, aged 13, for £1.50. There are often jackets/shirts in the women's section which work well as dressing up clothes.
Our local Facebook groups often have posts from parents selling on costumes that they bought last year. Most schools do the same dress up days every year.

Don't know where all these " dress up days" come from. There used to be the occasional Easter Bonnet when I was at primary school but that was about it. More recently, when my kids were at school I would get really stressed about this as it became a real social pecking order issue in our village.
The rich " ladies that lunch" all formed little craft cliques to show off how creative and artisan they could be. ( If they weren't creative, they paid someone to be creative for them)
If you bought a costume, you were one of " those mum's" who probably worked and " didn't spend quality time" on their children's special days.
If you ignored the last minute instructions or said you didn't want to take part, or made a sort of token gesture, your child was subject to parental pity as the offspring of a parent who was " somehow lacking."
All this was compounded by a prize being given for best costume each time.
All- in- all a horrible devisive activity which could have been avoided if the costume making had been done by the children in school with the help of the teachers. A communal box of craft resources would even out the differences, reward student artistic talent and stop some parents from showing off.
This makes all the mums in my village sound horrible. Most are not, but it only takes a couple in each little primary school to make things hard work.

My kids declined to participate in ‘wear red to show racism the red card’ recently. I was slightly concerned that it might give the impression therefore that we welcome racism.

world book day is probably my least favourite day of the year.

I go low effort

I remember 20 years ago or my son springing on me I think it was World Book Day on me the night before (I know I know bad parent I should’ve known 🤪, working full-time stressful job running around like a head of chicken etc), managed to cobble something together, thankfully! Anyway, I do know these can be difficult for many for a number of reasons. Would I be a killjoy to say they could do away with things like this in school 😩 ?

I just sent dd in in pink joggers and jumper. Couldn’t find her white trainers so she went with black ones which I feel bad about

she came home with grass stains on the joggers which are now added to the wash pile 😪

DH had a conversation with the head of our local high school many years ago. Dress down days had the highest incidence of non-attendance because so many pupils felt that they didn't fit in either due to neuro diversity or lack of family income/support.

Yup it was a real problem for me when I had three at school.
Very expensive. They’d change what was required each time so I couldn’t use same outfit twice 🙄. They also got put on cloud if the outfit didn’t meet the odd and very specific requirements.

Like PP I did keep them off school a few times because of it (limited income, high bills)

Our school stopped all of these things including book day (fair enough as everyone was dressing as Harry Potter or a superhero😅)- worst used to be the sports day before they just started using bibs- the week before you’d be told your child was in the yellow or orange team and needed a tee shirt that colour- it was never black/ white/ navy/ bright blue (the colours we actually had!) One year I bought a red/ orange/ white multipack- my son was stripes that year😅😅😅

I haven't rtft but when discussing numbers day last night with me asking what DS had in mind he just said "I'll choose something in the morning and just draw a number on my face" 🤣

I was like, oh great - that works 😆

Our school sent a letter though saying even a playing card pinned to a sweater or similar was absolutely fine 🤷‍♀️ grateful they're so relaxed as I agree, dress up days when kids were younger and more anxious were Not much fun!! 😫

I remember thinking why do my mum friends complain about World Book Day? You just plan ahead, it happens every year!
So when my DC was old enough, I very smugly got a costume in the January sales, oh how smug I was. I was so prepared for World Book Day. My first WBD accomplished.
Then nursery announced that for WBD, one week in advance, the children would be dressing up as farm animals.
😒

Nursery are doing this. Thankfully like the inset days you have to pay for it's never landed on one of our days.

They did this at my child’s school. I didn’t buy any outfits, she wore own clothes. It’s ridiculous

You’d have had to fight me to the death not to have sent DC in a t-shirt with 69 on it.

We had number dress up day. Just got a couple of plain t-shirts from Asda for £2, cut out some fabric numbers and stuck them on. Bought the t-shirts in next size up so I can reuse them next year!

I lovingly made DS a giant orange peach with handrawn by him spiders and ladybugs etc, seagulls on pipe lenses from the loo roll stalk so he could go as James with the Giant Peach.

On the day he refused to go unless he wore his Spider-Man outfit.

So, Spider-Man and the Giant Peach it was.