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?

Surely they should be jettisoned if even one kid feels they can’t go without the costume. Never mind multiple kids.

Why oh why do schools do so many dress up days? They must know most parents find it a hassle at best and some parents and kids genuinely find it difficult to do?

I’m a teacher and I find dress up days incredibly stressful. I usually refuse to take part - dressing up just makes me anxious.
Thankfully, in secondary we don’t do it much.
Daughter’s school doesn’t have a huge number of dress up days, but I am not even remotely crafty and we don’t have plain clothes that can be written/drawn on so it’s a nightmare when they do. And (also SW) when you’re 20 miles from the nearest town centre and work full time, buying anything is hard to manage.
In all honesty, I’m that parent that usually completely forgets, but if I do manage to remember then she will usually just wear normal clothes. Sometimes she’ll even opt for school uniform.

Luckily we don’t have too many but when we do there’s always an option to wear their own clothes or uniform. Sometimes mine join in. Sometimes not.

of its world book day we sometimes tailor it to the clothes we have!! Or they go as a kid from a book in kids clothes.

some love it though so each to their own!! But you can tell th crafty ones, the parents that don’t work, and the rich ones! 🤪

I just don't take it too seriously.

Easy options I saw today -

1. Football shirt
2. Old stained top with numbers written on it with a sharpie
3. Cardboard headband with a cardboard number stuck to it.
4. School uniform

Secondary school has been a welcome relief from all this nonsense.

we had green day, red day, blue day, world book day, Halloween, pj day, odd sock day, mad hair day, sports day (always a different colour and a matching cap), Christmas jumper day and a mad scramble every Christmas for some random thing (pirate, lion, robot..) for the play. €2 donation for each, as well as the cost of clothing that often wasn’t worn again.

That was in addition to the spare change collection, multiple cake sales (requiring both cakes and cash), raffles (donate prizes and buy tickets), book sale, carol service, Christmas fair, sponsored walk, an annual dinner dance type fundraiser, and a “voluntary contribution” of €350

My DS hated dress up days. He would choose to go in his uniform. I told him to say he forgot if challenged by a teacher or so on.
DD was interested in a few times, book week esp. but I'd give her a deadline of 4 weeks prior so that I had time to find stuff (we'd go to charity shops). I think she gave up on it when she saw how much effort she had to make for it (trawling through charity shops searching for particular items)
So glad all of that is behind us now

I found the way to relieve the stress about it was to buy something cheap off Amazon. I started off trying to be crafty, but I’m not great at it, the kids didn’t appreciate it and it took too much time for the result.

I get the issue with one off throw aways, though. Would there be anyway to get the school to tell you all the dress up days in advance and then the PTA could run a costume jumble sale at the beginning of term?

yr 4 and have never had a numbers day

tho have

world book day
Break rules day
Roman /egyptian/space etc day

school has a uniform online shop that can hire costumes for £2/3

peopl who buy off amazon etc can sell to school for few pounds so it’s a win win

I hated it, my kids hated it (Both of my older kids didn't enjoy dressing up at all, even as the usual superhero or princess stuff). I used to just send them in plain clothes with a prop (like a number badge for number day) or something like a golden ticket for world book day. Props for the win.

My youngest has severe learning disability and autism and his school don't really participate in this stuff. Maybe the odd Pudsey day. It's sad in a way, but funnily enough I'm ok with it.

It always used to cause anxiety in our house too. We don't do them at my school anymore, the odd non-uniform day or wear a certain colour day but nothing on a theme. Often families have enough stress and expense in their lives without schools adding to it with ridiculous ideas that haven't been thought through.

That's far too sensible

Numbers day was the easiest day. Just got an old t-shirt and wrote a lot of numbers on it in fabric markers. One time I just drew a Domino on a white t shirt.

Can't they simply wear their clothes inside out on number day? That way the size labels would show - and knowing your size (or quite often an age range on children's clothes) is an important use of numbers.

At our school, Number Day -yesterday -was wear something ( anything) with numbers on or go as a rockstar (TTRockstars ). Most kids had felt pen numbers on old t-shirts, some ( me included) wore rockstar gear ie biker jacket/jeans or something sparkly. Some had bought stuff, but not many… and there were quite a few “6,7” tops😏
Some forgot.
It really doesn’t have to be elaborate! Same for Victorian, Egyptian, World Book Day… just think of something that requires jeans and a T-shirt if you really can’t do anything else, but at least you’re taking part ,, which is what matters. We never ask for anyone to go out of their way to buy/make stuff unless they want to!

I am not a fan of these days either but my son likes not wearing his uniform (which is very strict and more like a secondary school uniform).

I bought a load of make your own badges on Amazon for a few pound and we just make some badges and attach to normal clothes, job done. Yesterday he went as 10, he loves October as it's Halloween and his birthday so we did a number 10 badge and a few Halloween ones and a few birthday ones (used stickers on the badges). Took 5 minutes.

These things can be as stressful as we allow them, our school always says not to buy a costume etc... lots of people do. I do not. For my son the joy is not wearing a school shirt for the day, adding an elaborate, probably sweaty costume would just ruin his day.

when I worked in a primary school and we had dressing up days I found it stressful as well! I didn't want to be boring and wear same outfit each year (apart from Roman or Victorian day)
I feel your pain 😘

Numbers day? What fresh hell is this? Never heard of that one. Bet there’ll be a lot of 6 7s.

I used to hate the stress of WBD when I had 3 DC at primary school. At the end of the day a prize would be awarded to the child whose parents had spent the most time and money on their costume best dressed child in each class, and in the younger classes it inevitably ended in tears at pick up time as there was only one winner and 29 losers and up to that point they’d all thought their costumes were the best. So there’d be extra pressure from the DC to come up with a good outfit. Thankfully, the competition element was axed by the new head. But then we got Crazy Hair Day which seemed to be a platform for the mothers of girls to compete, and which most of the boys ignored. And what was the point of it?

I am so glad all this is behind me now.

So many - fortunately have never had the rockstar or number one but remember one of my friends having the rockstar one and tearing her hair out.

My eldest liked them, my youngest isn’t as bothered. I don’t know if this is universal but it has seemed like the girls have been more enthusiastic than the boys. Last one we had was Egyptian day and all the girls had themed dresses and went to town with makeup and eyeliner and most of the boys were in jeans and a T-shirt.

I actually hate the colour ones the most. ‘Just wear something yellow.’ Well no, I don’t have loads of yellow actually so the ‘just wear’ inevitably involves a last minute Amazon purchase for something that won’t be worn again.

And while I’m on a roll… my other pet hate is ‘just being a spare pair of trainers you don’t mind getting wet/dirty’. I’ve taken to keeping shoes that have been outgrown for this purpose but it’s not very nice to have to squeeze kids into a pair that is a bit too tight for the purposes of crawling through some sort of muddy pit.

I hated it. I didn't have the time, money and most of the imagination or creativity to magic up an outfit. Thankfully there wasn't that many of them. My two always went as Matilda on World Book day. They wore their own clothes and that was that. The school uniform itself is enough of an expensive without dressing up days adding to it.

Surely the added educational value is questionable.

It's supposed to be fun and encourage engagement with the topic. This obviously won't suit some children, but most seem to enjoy these days.

OP, the teachers hate these days too. My husband is SLT in a primary school, and realised late on Thursday night that it was number day the next day. Cue much swearing and trying to find a t-shirt with a number on. He didn’t have one. Some years he has refused to dress up. We didn’t have the spare money to waste on Amazon tat for dressing up like a Shakespearean character. I wish schools would just stop the days altogether.

Send child in with a pie (Pi). Then they can eat their 'fancy dress' at the end of the day...

I absolutely hated those days - they only appeal to parents who like to show off their craft skills (I didn't have any). And when it came to bringing in stuff you were "helping" them with at home - like making decorated (real) Easter eggs, the competition was always won by the child (really parent) who had created a fancy tableau. If they really want it to be for the children's creativity they should include a sheet of suggestions and help for the parent. How was I supposed to suddenly dream up an outfit for "recycling" day? My mother never had to put up with this nonsense.

I don't know what numbers day is so maybe I'm misunderstanding but I recommend you get creative with the idea rather than the execution and just send him in with a head in a box,

Se7en.