Skip the Scramble :: Things I Keep Handy Throughout the School Year to Make Those Crazy Themed Days Easier
There was a time before I had kids that I bought costumes as often as I bought groceries because I *lived* for a good themed event. And as a New Orleanian, there’s always a themed event. My Coloradoan husband adopted my love for costumes shortly after we started dating and years later, our pregnancy announcement for our first kiddo was even costume-themed.
Parents with school-aged kids these days have their work cut out for them. Not only do they need to worry about replenishing school supplies, shoes and uniforms throughout the year, but they also have to navigate costuming their kids for the seemingly endless themed days that pop up too.
Maybe it’s the Type A planner in me or the fact that I already have so many costumes, but I try to get a jump on those themed days as best I can to save my own sanity. (Who are we kidding? It’s definitely the Type A thing.) I try to stop into a Dollar Tree every other week or so to see if I can snag anything that I can keep in my stash. And just like I found a way to tame the closet chaos, I found a way to keep these themed day supplies accessible: the 2.5 gallon storage bags from Dollar Tree labeled with the them and thrown in a bin. Then on Sunday nights, I check the calendar for the upcoming week and make sure our Monday-Friday clothing drawers are loaded appropriately.
We are very fortunate that the absolute HEROES running our school’s PTA releases a list in late summer of all the dress-up days for the year, so I can check things off my list early. But if you are new to a school or can’t remember what you did last year, here’s a list (in no particular order) of some popular themed days many schools seem to do along with things I try to keep on hand to use in a pinch:
- 50th Day of School: usually a 1950s theme. For the boys, white T-shirts with the sleeves rolled up and jeans with the bottoms cuffed work well with a little hair gel and some cool black sunglasses. For the girls, a poodle skirt is probably the most popular choice, but you could do capri pants and a ponytail with a scarf.
- 100th Day of School: usually an elderly person costume or 100 “somethings” glued on a T-shirt. Things like little pom-poms or googly eyes are small enough to keep on hand without taking up too much space.
- Glow Day: something fluorescent or tie-dye to show up well under black lights
- Crazy Hair Day: hair gel, colored hair spray, silly hair accessories — Dollar Tree is awesome for stocking up on hair products like sprays, gels, hair tinsel & bobby pins
- Hawaiian Shirt Day: pretty self-explanatory here, I have shirts in various sizes from having 3 kids close in age
- Crazy Sock Day: Dollar Tree is a great resource for this, I just keep my eyes peeled year-round. The hardest part around our house is making sure the socks get put back in the crazy sock place and not *mysteriously* in their dresser sock drawers!
- Storybook Character Costume: Our school does this for Halloween. I have my kids pick their characters weeks in advance so I can order or gather supplies to make a costume AND I “confiscate” the book for safekeeping so we aren’t trying to find it the night before (or morning of!) in a sea of books on bookshelves in their bedrooms or in the playroom.
- Sports Team: This might be easy at your house if you’re big sports fans. A friend once mentioned giving Saints & Pelicans gear as birthday gifts since they’ll get worn — even if it’s just at a Sports Team Day at school — and I thought that idea was genius!
- Superhero: We have a set of inexpensive capes and masks from Amazon that were originally for our dress-up bin but have slowly migrated to the themed bins.
- Pajama Day: I’m guessing you already have some of these!
- Christmas: Each year, I try to get a Tacky Sweater and a Santa Hat for each kiddo if we don’t have one in their size already. And then I buy bulk packs of Christmas accessories (headbands and sunglasses) and crazy Christmas socks that can often be reused if they make it back home in decent condition. We usually have an array of Christmas jammies from years past that we can pull from for a Christmas PJ Day.
- Wild West Day: Outfit your little cowboy or cowgirl with a bandana and a cowboy hat. Dollar Tree is my go-to for the hats, and the bandanas I’ve been amassing for years.
- Red Ribbon Week: This is late October and consists of red hats, sunglasses, socks, accessories each day of the week. I try to check Dollar Tree first, but I also sometimes buy bulk packs of them online.
- Yellow for School Safety/Go Gold for Childhood Cancer Awareness: I buy a few plain yellow T-shirts at Michael’s or Hobby Lobby at the beginning of the school year so I have them ready. They get washed and go straight into the themed bins so I don’t have to search for them in their dresser drawers.
- Breast Cancer Awareness: Same as the yellow T-shirts above but in pink.
