..."as part of the day it is asked that your child dresses in Victorian clothes" ...

[Smithagain]

... thus reads the request, so casually inserted in an otherwise innocuous letter about a school trip next week.

... oh, and by the way, DD1 also requires white shoes for her play on Tuesday ... and a warm shawl which will look elegant with her fairy godmother costume, without interfering with her wings.

BUT WE DON'T HAVE ANY OF THOSE THINGS!

I thought I was doing so well, having produced a chinese costume from thin air. And the other day DD2's teacher asked if I was OK, because "everyone says you're looking very tired".

I wonder why that might be?

(Ignore me, just a light-hearted, end of term, straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back rant so that I don't take it out on any of the hard-working and dedicated staff that normally have my utmost respect, but are just pushing their luck a teeny, weeny bit with the latest costume requests)

Merry Christmas!

Delighted to say that DS' nursery and primary school have both opted for the re-use nativity costumes option, so that my big DS now 16 wore the same Wise Man costume as his little brother aged 4. As for Tudors/Victorians/Romans/the rest - parents' revolt needed! Can you all get together and say this is not normal, a waste of time and a bad example to set to children? I hate dressing up and so do my boys (yes I know this is not a coincidence!). We always ignored Book Week or opted for an out-of-school muggle in Harry Potter so as not to have to try too hard. No long term harm resulted...

MY DS had to dress in Victorian clothes.He just wore long shorts and long socks,shirt an waistcoat,and a flat cap.
All the girls wore long skirt,black tights,blouse and shawl or cardigan.Wasn't too difficult.

My son won the world book day dressing up prize by going as himself(he hates dressing up)+ chocolate bar and golden ticket(Charlie).
I actually like making things,but have just spent half the week making "sand-dancer costumes for my son and 2 friends and wonder where the many previous sand-dancer costumes ended up. Hopefully our head is the only one with a penchant for sand-dances

op - You mention you had a straw that broke the camels back.....you don't by any chance have a camel costume do you?!?!
My sister has twins. One is a narrator, easy. The other is supposed to be a camel. She can't get a camel costume anywhere. She got a red letter from the teacher this week to remind her of it. Which prompted her to tell the teacher that the only way she could get one was to buy one for £12 from ebay which probably wouldn't arrive in time and that she wasn't prepared to pay £12 for something which would be worn for one afternoon.
I think its outrageous that they give people such a short amount of time to find complicated costumes.
One woman I spoke to had a week to find/make an OXEN outfit. ?!
Another one was told that her daughter was a star (easy, she thought, £4 in Matalan or Asda) but , oh no! So as not to exclude children whose parents who can't afford to buy fancy costumes could she please dress her in white shorts and a white t-shirt & sew the tinsel on the t-shirt in a star shape.
Erm...white shorts in winter are quite hard to find and actually cost her more than a star outfit would do.
Its madness I tell you!
Why don't schools just keep a stock of old costumes like in the old days when we were at school?

Agree it's such a waste to have 100 people cutting up and throwing away cheap T shirts every year. I like the idea of schools using plain clothes and masks/hats to create characters. Can't see any reason why commonly used costumes like nativity characters and Victorians can't be re-used. Or at least sold on ebay next December?a

Camel costume - what was the school's response?

DS1 is an ox, we have just had to send in brown t shirt and trousers. Hope he has a mask or his acting will need to be very good

trilby and trench coat needed, here. for a 7 yo!! age 7-8 trench coats are SO easy to find, lol.

Don't even get me started,at my dd1 school,the school have given us a week to produce a tudor costume for the Christmas play.

Not sure what the teacher said to my sister. But she asked the teacher to give him a different part or he won't be coming in. This was on Friday afternoon so I guess she will hear back on Monday. She was more annoyed that she had got reminder letter written in red I think.
Plus, last year she had to find sheep costumes for her twins. Which was irksome as all the supermarkets were selling everything but. So I ended up making them out of towels. Then she over did it with the face paints and they ended up looking like zombies and the other children were scared of them. Oops.

If schools still had jumble sales then the teachers could just have first pick off the stuff which could be used/altered and then they could have whole stash of trench coats/possible tudor outfits.

Camel costume - what a nightmare - can she get to a haberdashers and buy some felt? - brownish/beigish long-sleeved tshirtand trousers. Brown or black socks and gloves if you can. Then make a hump:

BUY large piece of brown felt, or two small squares. Cut one big (not TOO big - say about like a largish cereal bowl) circle out of large piece, or two half circles out of small pieces. Fold large piece in half and sew open edge up (very rough large tacking stitches in my case, but go over it a couple of times), or put two half circles together and sew round the whole edge. In either case, leave a couple of inches open. Sort through tights drawer and cut up any tights with holes in as stuffing (or use cotton wool, kitchen towel, whatever you've got available at 1am the night before the play. Stuff hump. Attach straight edge of hump to back of tshirt with more large stitches, or safety pins.

Paint face with brown/beige face paint or just mix up all the face paint colours you have to get brown.

Thing is, I'm crap at making things but I'm also the drama teacher so I'm supposed to be able to pull all sorts of things out of thin air. When DS turned up one day dressed as something vaguely scary for a Halloween theme day, I was publicly berated by a colleague (part time and so she has loads of time to make exotic costumes for her own kids). She actually looked DS up and down and said "Honestly, look at him. And you, the drama teacher. You should be ashamed of yourself." It was DS I felt bad for mainly - I can take it but he was very hurt.

Homemade costumes are often not cheaper than shop bought - you still have to source & buy the fabric, thread etc accessories.

Our school won't allow shop bought costumes as they apparently look a bit too showy & don't look authentic enough. But best effort is often not good enough and they will often send back homemade costumes with suggestions for improvement!

My DSs:

Victorian costumes: e-bay (cheap)
Angel costume: old white Monsoon tunic of mine, with halo of tinsel
Wise man and Traveler and market trader (!!!) all found in local charity shop for 3 pound each (basically random tunics made out of old curtains by a mum who was much more entrepreneurial than me!).

I will keep all of these so I can recycle them or trade with other mums for next year.

job done

I know that this is supposed to be a light-hearted rant but really ...!

I was a F/T WOHM when mine were little and I managed to do the costumes. Haven't you been helping your DC to practise their lines/lyrics for weeks? - is it really such a surprise when you are asked to produce the costume to go with it? Over the years, I stashed all the costumes in a dressing-up box, which was augmented with various charity-shop buys when I came across them, and it's amazing how many outfits you can make out of tweaking the basics (eg ghost and angel are very similar and came out of an old sheet; devil's and Little Red Riding Hood's cloak came out of a red skirt etc).

I enjoyed doing costumes: it make me realise that I was more dextrous and artisitc than I thought I was.

Every time I see these threads I'm relieved (but somewhat surprised) to realise that our school seems to be one of the only ones that actually pprovides the nativity costumes.

A wonderful TA made them and they are stored at the school and brought out every year and altered if necessary. The only thing parents might have to provide is , for example, brown trousers and top to go with the mask and humped tabbard if a camel.

Its not all easy though -we still get the come as a book character/a famous person from history/ a Victorian/an evacuee requests the rest of the year

I agree this is a PITA and also very stressful for parents. It makes people feel they are competing and/or being shown up, and it discriminates against people who have very little time. I realy think they should be working with the kids at school/nursery to make the stuff - they need activities, I can't understand why they don't do it that way.

I actually am a dab-hand with the sewing machine but I always try to make it pretty minimal because I don't want to spend hours on it and I don't want to make myself look competitive. I also try to involve DS in the making.

The secret IMO is to take the key feature of the outfit and make that stand out. So, cow/sheep/reindeer: make cardboard horns or antlers stuck to a cardboard ring-shaped headpiece, and if you want to go the extra mile make a simple tabard shape or just wrap around a bit of cow/furry fabric. King or queen: focus on the crown, the obvious bit, and for the rest just smart clothes will do. Tree: cardboard head ring with leaves stuck on, green/brown clothes. If there is an obvious feature it will work, and it doesn't actually matter how rough/homemade it looks.

Obviously somethings like victorian clothes would be harder.

The thing that annoys me is that even with my pretty basic approach, I get that slightly bitchy response from other mums as in "oh I have performance anxiety now" "oh how can I compete with that". Fuck off! I know it's kind of a veiled compliment but it gets my back right up, it's like being at school again myself. Do something halfway decently and there's a huge agenda of are you showing off or are you trying to establish yourself in the pecking order. I honestly couldn't give a shit about playground politics and it riles me to have to take part in something that brings all that guff with it.

just had to make shepherds costume in 2 days!! they gave me the letter on friday and it has to be in monday. its done but i'm not impressed.

a bit more notice would have been nice!

Wonder web was made by angels, twas vvvvv helpful

We had Roman day a few weeks ago- I spent ages finding an authentic simple outfit to copy on the net then making it out of our fabric box. The effort's never appreciated- not one of the teachers mentioned anything, and at the end of the day it came back balled up at the bottom of dd1's schoolbag.
I want her to take part and enjoy the dressing up days and we have quite a sizeable dressing up box, but we never seem to have what's needed!

My friends dd is a child in winter clothing in the time of Jesus. wtf is she supposed to dress her in. I thought where Jesus was born it was supposed to be hot so why the winter clothing! She is sending her in hat, scarf, gloves and coat. With shorts and tshirt just in case!

I've got off lightly this year. All I had to privde for DS angel costume was a white tshirt, tights and tinsel.
Others have had to do all sorts of animals.

It does get a bit silly though, in this term we've had:
Welly day
Nativity costumes
Harvest festival requiring fruit/harvest gifts
non-uniform day (notified to us 3 days before hand and around 1/5 of the kids missed the note, turned up in their uniform and were very embarrased)
numerous requests for 'stuff', from mosiac tiles, leaves, foil, envelopes, to loo rolls, boxes (and its fun carrying those on the school run) and flour.

then there's the 5 fundraising catalogues, 6 fundraising days / events.
3 afternoon events that you don't 'have to attend' but we do 'like parents to be there'.

I do wish schools would get a grip on the fact that many of us WORK (whether at home or outside the home - I dont' care if you are a surgeon or a mum of 3 under 3 - you are TOO BUSY some days to whip up a costume from scratch).
There's definitly a BIG time commitment required with kids at primary school.

He just wore long shorts and long socks,shirt an waistcoat,and a flat cap.

none of which my DS owns, so if I was asked to dress him as a victorian I would have to go out and buy, beg or borrow or make all of those items - and probably do it within a week to boot.

And no he doens't actually own a shirt, he is 4, wear tshirts at home and polo shirts at school - oh I tell a lie he owns 2 hawian print shirts and one bright red one with thomas blaring across the back.

My DS's head teacher obviously had a hard time when her DD was at primary school, because the school now doesn't 'do' dressing up. At all. Except for plays, once a year, and then the school provides 90% of the costumes and all the 'extras' have nice easy ones.

I actually wouldn't mind doing the occasional costume, but it does sound like some schools are taking it a lot bit too far.

In reception we had to get Hawiaan shirts(can't spell) in December!

The angels were visiting many countries to find a place for Jesus.

DS1 is a Junior now so it's a carol concert at the local church in school uniform

DS2 starts school in 2011 and I have kept the shirt just in case!

As a primary teacher, I can tell you that not all schools are as bad as the horror stories on here! In our school we a) never dictate EXACTLY what a costume should look like, b) have a range of costumes in school for those who don't have anything at home, and c) try to offer practical advice for making an easy costume if necessary.

You'll find most teachers don't enjoy the dressing up days/non-uniform days because the class is generally much more unsettled, and for some, like world book day, we end up dressing up too! Then we know exactly what it's like in the days leading up to it, trying to keep up with marking and planning AND cobble together some outfit which the kids will recognise!

We generally do them for one of 2 reasons - 1) the kids have asked us to, for example the school council voted for a 'wear something yellow for Pudsey' day, or 2) we think the parents like us to be enthusing the children by introducing fun, but educational theme days.

However, we do try to give plenty of warning, and if we don't it's because we've been so busy with preparing for the Christmas play/trip/whatever, that we hadn't realised it's only a couple of weeks away and we need the costumes in ASAP! It's actually MAJORLY stressful preparing and putting on the play, especially when the children often haven't had an outdoor playtime for weeks because of the rain - you wouldn't believe how scared teachers are that something'll go wrong!

So, I guess I'll see this from the other side in 4 years when it's me being asked for stuff, but for now I say, give the poor teachers a break!