School uniform planning for new starters!

[drspouse]

A bit early as from memory there are sales around June (can anyone shed any light?), and all our Reception new starters will be growing like mad no doubt between now and then, but it's nice to have this to think about now the places are allocated for most.

My DD is very small so though she'll wear trousers (which she prefers to dresses generally) she needs her own new ones plus DS trashed his polos entirely so she'll only really get his old jumpers that all shrank a lot anyway.

They wear plain coloured t-shirts for PE and I found some in a 3 for 2 at Boots together with plain shorts so I got her age 3-4 which is pretty huge on her anyway!

M&S do 100% cotton trousers and they are OOS in her size but I'm assuming they'll be back in stock fairly soon. 100% cotton polos from Matalan are extremely reasonable!

I'm still going to be hunting for 100% cotton non-PE shorts for her I seem to remember from DS Reception days (he's still wearing that pair). Both of them seem to get quite itchy in non-cotton trousers.

Unfortunately DD is still not potty trained properly (we are seeing the continence nurse again next month) so it's going to be a case of sending at least 2 spare pairs a day and washing daily I fear.

But for DS we had 4 pairs of trousers to last the week (they wear their PE joggers all day on PE day which helps) and 6 polos as they come in packs of 2 or 3 anyway.

Despite what the optimistic posters on another thread think, we also needed more than 1 (2 or 3 worked OK) school jumpers/sweatshirts.

I'm happy to say that the amount of food and paint on DS' tops has reduced in Y1 but the amount of whiteboard pen hasn't and I still can't find any way to get that off!

My DDs often wore the same polo shirt and pinafore all week. I would have said 3 of each, plus 2 or even 3 cardigans (they get lost) would be plenty.

themonkeys We won't be doing Mary Jane style so I think we will be getting Kickers patent black with Velcro. My DD would not put up with wet socks/tights.
I think older girls don't wear summer dresses much and younger girls just wear knickers under them, no need for extra shorts.

Hi, I don’t have any tips but watching with interest. My eldest is starting school in September and any tips on how much to buy and from where would be great. Good tip re second hand. I haven’t heard about a sale but I’ll ask around!

Clarks do reinforced toes on some of their shoes, they have been great and 8 months in not one scuff on them. I have twins in reception and neither are scuffed so it wasn't just luck.

Ahh great. Thanks. I’ll look at kickers and reinforced toes Clarkes.

I have found Morrison's school trousers to be really good quality.

I bought some Asda ones which just faded at the knee really quickly.

However the uniform does get trashed and they grow a lot! . DS is in year 3 and is onto his third round of shirts (now short sleeved
) and third lot of bottoms now shorts. Even if it wasn't summer I would have had to replace the lot as it didn't fit.

So some times cheap and cheerful is they way to go as no doubt you'll be replacing it.

Actually dd starts this September. Where does nice school dresses without hearts or flowers on the zip/buttons.

I have a thing about not liking the girliness of it.

Blankscreen' we're doing shorts or skorts for summer for DD. I see the girls in their dresses in this cold April weather and just brr!

Ooh I've found some.cotton lycra trousers at Next. Pricy though, might be cheaper to make them.

direct.asda.com/george/school/pinafores-dresses/girls-grey-button-detail-pinafore-school-dress/GEM563463,default,pd.html

I love these for not overly girlie pinafores - I've used them for years with my kids - easy to get on and off (even with coordination difficulties), warmer for the winter months and look decent even if not ironed. They last well as well - I've only just put ones that we've had a good 3-4 years of wear out of between two kids in the charity shop bag as they were getting obscenely short. Some of the zip style pinafores are quite slender fitting and can be a bit of a pain on PE days and with dyspraxia to factor in and the fact that we're still fighting not putting legs through armholes... I go for as easy-on as possible. They come up fairly true to age on the sizing I've found - my kids are tall but can be in about their chronological age size for them.

Just ordered ours today - I've only ordered a couple of pinafores as even my messy one can usually eek a couple of days out of a pinafore - sorted pinafores and cardigans out this month (and name tapes since I hate sewing name tapes so do them as I buy uniform to spread the pain out a bit), and I'll do other bits next month and so on. We tend to flit between trousers and pinafores depending on how the mood takes us (and what all the other girls are wearing).

We've had a good year pretty much out of Asda school shoes - my kids' feet seem to be tiny and grow so slowly - I've relented and let the eldest change to the next size up today as she's been coveting the pair of shoes we've had on standby for months (they light up) but in reality she's still just very awkwardly between the two sizes. Well worth keeping an eye on the TK Maxx website though - they have a few pairs of Start-Rite school shoes on at the moment and we got some fantastic Geox ones last year on there that were "girlie" but enclosed foot like the boys style. I don't worry too much now though since our school lets the girls wear boots in the winter (head's view is "I don't care as long as they're sensible") so mine will be in boots for the cold weather.