World Book Day Costume 2025

Hello!

Yesterday, in my World book day poem post, I mentioned that our theme for World Book Day this year was Fairy tales/folk tales/traditional tales, possibly with a twist!

Here's my costume:

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Our new English lead wanted some ideas of what we could suggest the children could dress as that wouldn't cost them anything.

I suggested the children make some sort of cardboard tabard or sandwich board to wear.  It could be a setting image, a book cover, a character or an item from a folk tale.

I gave her two examples I made of a Gingerbread house and a ladybird.

Here is the tabard I made

One side is the pumpkin (and that's my wand for the fairy godmother- this was made for a choir concert about 5 years ago)

The other side is the coach that the pumpkin turns into!

My dress is actually one of my wedding dresses- bought on eBay in 2012 from Vivien of Holloway originally. It still fits, 12 years later!

I WAS going to wear my silver glittery shoes and a tiara but I had such a headache today, I couldn't face it. I was hypersensitive to smells today- everyone's room made me reel with artificial smells and cleaning products! I got through the day though.  Just wore my blue boots!

I also made another tabard example from The Hare and the Tortoise:

It is also double-sided:

 I had fun making these.

L, a year 3 teacher was dressed as Prince Charming- we had a photo together.

A, the English lead was dressed as Rumaysa, who is a retelling of Rapunzel but who uses her hijab to escape from the tower she is trapped in, instead of being rescued by a prince. She then helps other female characters to escape their own fates!  It's a great story! She looked amazing and she had 3 light pink scarves plaited and attached to her hijab and added flowers to it- she looked so beautiful!

A girl in her class, who I lent my copy of Rumaysa to, also came as Rumaysa and had made herself a tabard of the book cover- it was marvellous!

There was a brilliant child dressed as the Gingerbread man- a massive cardboard face!  

There were some other brilliant ones!

I loved Dog in Boots, one of my choir boys came dressed as an alternative version of Puss in Boots. 

The office staff came as The three little wolves and the big bad pig. This is a real book and is really funny!

There were a myriad Red Riding Hoods, Little Red Riding Hoodie, Little Red Running Shorts.

The three little minions (who I told they had to write the story to go with it and they did!) 

It is always such good fun to see the children!

xx

A Grimm Shopping List- Happy World Book Day!

 I wrote a poem for the kids at school for World Book Day. Our theme is Fairytales and Traditional Tales (also with a twist).

Here's my spin on Fairytales. Well, not a spin- an alternative presentation!

Can you recognise the origins of the items on my shopping list?

And, what am I going to dress up as???

A Grimm Shopping List

· A delectable Gingerbread House

· A  dapper cat dressed in boots.

· A old cow sold for a bag of beans.

· An emperor with invisible suits.

· A man enchanted as a beast.

· A  girl with hair long as a tower.

· A man with a name that’s hard to guess.

· A slipper dropped at the midnight hour.

· Dwarves with adjectival names.

· An old spinning wheel so sharp.

· Breadcrumbs dropped to find the way home.

· A magical singing harp.

· 3 swine with different built-houses.

· A scarlet –hooded cloak.

· A lamp that grants your greatest wish.

· A chair that a gold-locked girl broke.

· Twenty mattresses and a pea.

· A runaway made of gingerbread dough.

· Three billy-goats of diverse size.

· A wolf with a powerful blow.

· A hero or heroine good.

· A baddie with a plan that fails.

· Enchantments and aid from someone good.

· Behold a myriad fairy-tales.

 

World Book Day 2024 Costume

Hello there!

I hope you are well!

Finally managed to get around to getting the photos of my World Book Day outfit from my work colleague!

Remember, I told you my school was donning PJs or World Book Day.

I was very disappointed to say the least as was one of my lovely pupils!

I decided I could get round this.

I remember illustrations from JM Barrie's Peter Pan depict Wendy and her siblings in long white cotton night shirts and gown.

I also knew that I had my Mum's white cotton full-length nightgown from when she was one of the Major General's daughters in The Pirates of Penzance.

So, I donned this nightgown on a Thursday at school. Sadly, I decided it was a bit too wafty and nippy to wear on the train to work (much as I delight in the bemused side-eye from commuters when I sit there in costume) so I had to change on my way. I wore my Avid Reader's Book club sweatshirt from Joanie on the way.

I thought carefully about my accessories.

You might be able to spot the anchors on my white ballet pumps- a nod to the nautical setting for the story. Sadly, it's probably their last outing as the sole of one shoe had broken apart and disintegrated. There were bits of my shoe everywhere.

My hair got totally messed up in the wind but I added my purple Lady-tie bow into my hair.

Tinkerbell made an appearance!!! I decided to add this brooch as a nod to my character....even though Tink doesn't like Wendy!

 Did people recognise who I was?

Some of the kids thought I was a ghost, one colleague thought I was Jesus, a few weren't sure, several admired my lovely summer dress and yes, a few knew I was Wendy!

Would you have realised who I was?

I managed to incorporate World Book Day into my singing assemblies that week.

Either the Schools Musicals company or Out of the Ark had 2 free songs available on the theme which I taught to the children.  I also played the William Tell overture to KS2 and told them the story of William Tell and played the story of The Noon day witch by Dvorak to KS1.

Oh, by the way...

My choir got through to the final of my local area's Primary Year of the Year competition.

We were one of 6 schools chosen out of  the 24 who entered!  My choir were EUPHORIC to find out on Tuesday as was I!

Now, I have 3 rehearsals to get them ready for the final!

xx

World Book Day costumes 2023- Hal and the Highwayman.

World Book Day!

My favourite day of the year!!! (apart from Christmas performance day and Vltava performance day with the Year 5's)

I LOVE the excitement of seeing what children and adults will dress up as! The more home-made, the better!

This year, the teacher strikes were happening on the official 2nd March World Book Day.

My union had not achieved the threshold to strike so I was 'working' but because all the other teachers, bar one are with the NEU, our school was closed. I worked from home as my sympathetic SLT realise that making me do the 3 hour round-journey for no actual teaching was a waste of time and they know I will get on with work.

As I was working, it struck me that I could do an 'At Home' world book day costume. I tend to like to wear 'dressy' outfits for Book Day so I had a quick think about one I could wear at home.

I came across the wonderful 'Adventures on Trains; series by MG Leonard and Sam Sedgman a couple of years ago.  MG Leonard had a son who was fond of trains but realised there didn't seem to be any chapter books aimed at older children with an interest in trains. She got together with Sam Sedgman and they wrote the series together.  The first is called 'The Highland Falcon Thief' and is an excellent mystery adventure book with some wonderful historic train details such as the Water Scoop!

My Godmother bought me the next 2 AoT books for my birthday last year and I recently read 'Kidnap on the California comet'.  The main character, Hal, wears a distinctive yellow coat, white and black breton striped top and jeans on the front covers. Ha, I can think of several of us who could pull together this outfit.

I donned the aforementioned garments and tried to mimic the pose on the front of the book (with added rucksack)

I then attempted the 'coat off' version from the next book, "Murder on the Safari Star' with CBC's 40th birthday binoculars added.

I shared my pictures on Instagram and Sam Sedgman shared my picture on his Stories and MG Leonard shared mine in her gallery of Hal on her website!

Did I tell you about a lovely story connected to these books?

My work colleague has a son who is around 8.  We were chatting and she was saying that it was hard to get him to read any new books as all he wanted to read was Wimpy Kid books and wasn't enamoured by anything else. I asked if he liked trains (she said yes) and I offered to lend her the Highland Falcon Thief for him. She agreed and I lent it.

Fast forward a week later and she told me he was absolutely loving it and she had gone in and found him reading it by himself in bed and he even took it on holiday with him. He asked to buy the next book and when they accidently bought Book 3, he was fretting about it so I lent him the 2nd book. She sent me a picture of him already reading it in bed that night and he sent me a lovely picture of the Highland Falcon Thief that  he'd drawn for me to say thank you! She was so grateful!

It is a pretty special feeling to know you have helped someone in their reading journey. I am lucky I have the time and inclination to read a lot of children's book so I can match readers with books. A lot of teachers struggle to make the time for it so it is nice I can help.

Anyway, back to THE ACTUAL WORLD BOOK DAY at school costume.

Well, I was planning on dressing as Paddington Bear but then I realised Year 6 had been learning The Highwayman- a classic ballad by Alfred Noyes and I would be teaching Year 6 that day.It tells the story of a doomed highwayman who is in love with the landlord's daughter Bess but it all goes wrong.

Back in my 'World Book Day list of ideas', dating from at least a decade ago, I listed the idea for The Highwayman or Bess to be characters. The poem itself gives you a detailed list of what the Highwayman wears.

Here's what I wrote on my blog post:

The highway man:
Also good for Year 6 and year 5 children.  From Robert Louis Stevenson's classic narrative poem.
The poem tells you what the costume should be!
 He'd a French cocked hat at his forehead.
A bunch of lace at his chin.
A coat of claret velvet 
And breeches of fine doe-skin.
They fitted with never a wrinkle: his boots were up to the thigh!

And he rode with a jewelled twinkle,
His pistol butts a-twinkle,
His rapier hilt a-twinkle, under the jewelled sky.

(So that's:  a wine-red coat, ideally velvet, some sort of white shirt, ideally ruffly- you could make a ruffle out of some white material or just a handkerchief;   brown trousers or leggings (if girl?), A hat can be made out of black card again.    Think Admiral Nelson.
A sword in a belt, and two toy guns).  

When I used to teach this poem to Year 5, I did actually done a simple version of the outfit, o, I decided that I would like to be the Highwayman and do it properly as I knew we (meaning Mum and I) had all the garments between us.

Let's have a look at my outfit: 

I started with Mum's 1970's claret-velvet jacket.  I also had brown leggings which could act as his breeches of brown doe skin (worn with another pair of leggings underneath.Yes, I was self-conscious about wearing Leggings as trousers.

I added Mum's vintage leather belt to cinch the jacket and my eYe Italian brown boots to emulate his boots (not-quite thigh-level!)

When it came to the hats, Mum had both of my tricorn hats in her loft (bought for The Pied Piper of Hamelin a few years ago). 

She made me a blue ribbon hair-tie to do up my hair.

I asked Mum if she had any lace as I wanted to do something better for the 'bunch of lace at his chin' and for ruffly cuffs than CBC's Darcy shirt and sent her a picture of the Highwayman.

Fast forward a day and she had made me this wonderful neckpiece on elastic with some white cotton and some lace she had in the loft plus some elasticated ruffles for my wrists.

She also found an M&S vintage-looking blouse I'd given her from a charity-shop a few years ago that I could wear too.

I attempted to make a black eye-mask out of an old sock but it wasn't working so I donned a black headscarf as a face-covering to disguise my identify for any potential robberies!

I decided I would like a pair of pistol butts ("A twinkling") so I found a pair of duelling pistol images (which had both side views) online and I printed 2 sets of them. I cut them out and then stuck them to cardboard on both sides so I had the pistols to tuck in my pockets and brandish at individuals.

I decided against making a rapier. I did make an old sword for my Muskateer costume but I'm not sure where it is!

My final piece was to take a piece of cardboard and write out the opening verse of the Highwayman with its evocative setting-description (with excellent metaphors)  so I could share it with anyone who asked who I was.

On the otherside, I wrote out the verse/stanza about his description.

I then used watercolour pencils to try and illustrate the setting.

The Year 6's were delighted with my costume. Many of the other children thought I was a pirate!

In singing assembly for Year 4, I shared my true identify from the poem and then spent the assembly telling them the story of the Sorceror's apprentice by Paul Dukas whilst playing them the orchestral music.  I then showed them the beginning of the Fantasia version of it and encouraged them to try and find the end of it themselves.

They seemed pretty rapt with attention and said how clearly the music helped them.

Around the school, there were some marvellous costumes.

Some particular highlights were: The Gingerbreadman made out of Cardboard, the Headteacher in the most exquisite handmade 'Fantastic Mr Fox' outfit, the very hungry caterpillar in Year 6, Paddington Bear in Year 6. There were also lots of Wednedsay Addams characters- not sure if a book or not but they looked great!

Today was Cantatas and Concertos day in Year 6 where I got to share my joy in Bach's Coffee Cantata once again. I had a bit of a panic when I couldn't find my assessment sheets folder but luckily, after some ringing round, discovered one of the teachers had put it away safely for me! Phew!

Tomorrow, CBC and I are going to go on a foraging walk and meal with Vegetarian legend Leon Lewis and I really need to do some Gamelan practice!

Hope you are well!

xx

 

World Book Day costume 2022

It was that time of year again yesterday, where schools across the country hosted dress up days to dress up as a character from a book of some sort. I was pleased my school sent out a message asking parents to try and use things they had already rather than worrying about going out to buy special costumes.  I did see some lovely creativity yesterday.

This year, I didn't have a clear idea of who or what I wanted to be until last Saturday morning where I decided I wanted to be Robin Hood!

I knew I needed a costume consisting of green and brown garments.

Firstly, I started with gathering some green and brown leggings I have-either pair would work for my bottom half but it would depend what shade of green I was to wear on my top half that would determine which pair would get the job.  All my green dresses and garments weren't really suitable- I knew I needed a sort of tunic and everything I had was too short or two frilly/modern-looking!

I headed to my local charity shop on Saturday morning to see if there was any suitable green garment or jacket of any sort but there was nothing suitable and we were heading off to Oxford to my Mother-in-Law's birthday party so I only had time to visit the one.  I DID, however, pick up a dark green, fake leather bag that would work as a quiver for my arrows!

Chatting to my Mum on the phone, she suddenly realised, she had an old, large green t-shirt of my StepDad's that she had chopped the sleeves off which might work and after she sent me a picture, I concurred so she kindly posted it to me to arrive for Monday!

When it arrived, I tried wearing it over the top of the brown linen shirt I've worn for my Clara and Missy cosplays and it worked well. To belt it, I wore my Mum's old brown leather belt I acquired a few years ago.  CBC decided that the green leggings were totally the wrong shades so I went with the brown and paired them with my dark green Ralph Lauren knee-high leather boots.

Tuesday night, in school, I had a frantic search for my Bow (alas, no arrows) which, in the whole upheaval of not being in my music room, had got buried.  Thankfully, I found it. I bought this from Hever Castle an age ago.

I intended to make myself a hat out of green felt or funky foam but the sized pieces I had were too small and I suddenly thought of a Monsoon green wool hat I have- perhaps I could safety pin the edges to the crown.  After a few false attempts, this was successful. I finally made a red paper feather to tuck in.

Wednesday night saw me cutting up a cardboard box into 10 arrows (I cut 20 cardboard strips and 20 triangles and used paper tape to stick these together and staples for the points, plus I fringed the ends.  At the last minute, I made a small dagger too.

One last minute idea was to add a small black velvet jewellery pouch to my belt.  I also compiled two bags of chocolate coins that CBC and I had received belatedly for Christmas from his sister on Saturday and I put them into a small hand-tooled green leather handbag I have (not pictured)

All day at school, the younger kids kept thinking I was Peter Pan though the older ones realised I was Robin Hood.

The costumes of other staff members were really good.

In year 6, they all dressed as characters from Louis Sachar's Holes book, which they are currently reading.

In Year 5, they dressed as Alice characters- a white rabbit and 3 cards.

In year 4, only one member of staff was in and she dressed as George from George's Marvellous medicine (I suggested this to her as she wasn't sure what to do by herself!) 

In year 3, they all dressed as crayons as they have been reading, The Day the crayons came home.

In Year 2, they are reading The Twits, so they all came as different characters- there were 2 Mrs Twits and 1 Mr Twit and a Roly-poly bird (the PGCE student who had to do an observation with her tutor dressed like that). I was pleased as I helped her and she wore lots of my chiffon scarves (the ones I wore for my Rainbow Fish costume) attached to her skirt.  Also the other teacher was Fantastic Mr Fox.

IN year 1, the majority of staff dressed as The Grumpiest Ladybird plus one Witch.

SLT dressed as Willy Wonka characters with our Headteacher in the most exquisite Willy Wonka costume, made by his other-half.  He also took my suggestion to give out Wonka bars as prizes!

There were 4 Oompa Lumpas -the Deputy and Assistant Heads and then the School Business manager wore a handmade Golden Ticket dress.

I even managed to recruit myself a Maid Marion- one of the lovely TAs didn't have a costume and was very busy and I offered her my charity-shopped purple dress I wore as Guinevere in 2012.  I have covered her face here as I don't have her permission to use the picture and I don't really like telling people about my blog! She looked so pretty in it though!

Of course, I went to school dressed like this AND up to London to my Gamelan rehearsal.  I love freaking out business people and teenagers on the train when I dress in a funny manner!  It was an incredibly comfortable costume and the only purchase was my green bag which I may redonate again.

It's so fun to come up with a costume and I can't wait for next year to try and think of a new costume with things I've already got!

What would you wear as a book character?

I quite fancy dressing up as Saucepan man from The Magic Faraway tree next year. It would be easy to make lots of cardboard saucepans and string them up all over myself!

xx

World Book Day Costumes 2021

 My school decided to postpone our World Book Day celebrations till today so the children were in school. The main reason was because we had a Zoom date with Michael Rosen, the wonderful children's author and poet.

This year, I decided to make one of my ideas that I have listed in my 'World Book Day costume ideas' blogpost but never actually made.

My inspiration was The Rainbow Fish from the above book.

It has a wonderful moral about not being proud and sharing your riches with others and is really beautiful!

As always, I want to make my costume from things I already have- I've only ever bought tiny items for my World Book Day costumes and used things that can go back to their regular use afterwards.

I started by knowing I wanted to use some of my craft felt stash to make coloured fish scales.  I found this turquoise top in my charity bag. It's too tight (and too low cut) and so I was going to get rid of it so I decided to give it a makeover.

I cut a template from a coaster and cut various scallops from the appropriately-coloured felt.

I sewed them roughly to the top.

Unfortunately, when I tried it on, because it was so tight, some of the threads pulled and broke.

I tried to sew them back on and hoped for the best.

Next, I wanted to make some fins so I had brought home some chiffon scarves that I use at school for music and movement with the year 1 children.  I got an old pair of pants of CBC's (they were in a cull bag) and I cut the cotton material off and left myself with the blue waistband. I tied 6 different scarves to that so they would dangle.

I laid these out on top of a blue petticoat that my sister bought me about 6 years ago and decided I needed more fins, perhaps from my shoulders so I took 3 chiffon scarves in 3 colours and tied them with a knot and I tied them onto large safetypins which I attached to the shoulders.

I made one more which I decided I would attach to my ponytail in the morning.

When I got up in the morning, I donned a blue top and leggings and a blue skirt to make the journey to school and put everything on when I got there.

The final touches were to dust my face with shimmery eye-shadow and I added my new GoryDorky necklace which my sister bought me for my birthday. It looks like soap suds but I decided to don it to represent the final glittery scale that the Rainbow fish has left after he's donated all his beautiful shimmery scales to the other fish.

And the final touch was my Nickat irridescent bubble earrings.

The children that knew the story recognised me instantly.  A few thought I was a mermaid or a princess.

It was a hard outfit to wear on a windy day- my scarves went everywhere!

However, that's not the end of things I made this year.

I decided to bite the bullet and make a few examples of simple costumes that could be made out of cardboard.

The first was a Wardrobe!

For a Narnian theme.  I was going to make some optional face masks to hang off it for a white witch and a lion but I ran out of time. I still have a wardrobe.

Next, I used an old pizza box (a supermarket one) and I painted a Gingerbread house that could be worn for a simple Hansel and Gretel-themed costume, either alone or with another costume, e.g. witch, lederhosen, dirndl etc. I added string to the top.

The next costume I made was a simple Ladybird costume which could be easily put onto a child should they need a costume. It actually ended up being used by my Deputy Head Teacher.

I had a pair of cardboard pizza bases which were relatively clean so I painted them red during a staff meeting. I then drew black spots on them in a marker.

I then hole-punched the tops to make them into a tabard.

The final touch was (if worn with all black), a head-dress made from red card and some wire from a floral decoration which I bent into antennae

My final contribution to the day was to help Year 3 teachers.

They were all going to come in wearing all black (boring) but didn't know what book to go with. I suspected they were the character of The Dark from the book by Lemony Snicket.

The Dark is personified and Lazlo, the little boy in the book, is really scared of it as he goes through the dark house with his torch.  The dark keeps talking as he goes and in the end, he realises, the dark can actually be our friend.

They were all entranced with the idea.  To help, I printed 3 mini copies of the book for them to hang round their necks with string and I made them all torches out of card too.

Other great costumes included all of Year 2 who came as Oliver Jeffers' The Crayons, a full blown Gruffalo, Year 5 as Willy Wonka characters, Year 6 as characters from Holes (Louis Sachar). Year 4 are studying the book Varmints at the moment and all came in adorable Varmints costumes with ears, noses and bunny ears!

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World Book Day outfit 2020

Hello there!
I knew what I wanted to wear or make for World Book Day this year quite a long time ago.
Char shared this post of her amazing felt parrot costume

Amazing costume made by Char!
http://www.trexesandtiaras.com/2019/08/diy-parrot-costume.html

and I decided, since I had a large piece of red felt and lots of smaller sheets of reds, oranges and yellows, that I wanted to dress up as a Phoenix or the Firebird.  Phoenixes feature in several books - E Nesbit's Phoenix and the Carpet, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix amongst others.  This is an idea, I've shared on my World Book day post because I was dressed as the Firebird at my music camp for a silly challenge some 12 years ago or so where we were the Order of the Firebird in the year it came out.

However, the reality of the situation was...
1. I'm really not good at sewing.
2. I don't have a sewing machine.
3.  I left it to the last minute
4.  I can't find the large piece of felt that was supposed to be my base.

So... on Friday last week, I decided to think of another way of making this costume.

It involved
1.  Cycling home with an absolutely enormous cardboard box, flattened and stuffed in my Brompton pannier.
2.  Taking, with permission, lots of offcuts of orange, yellow, red paper from school that are put on a shelf in case they fill in a gap.

And here's my costume:

 Let me talk about what I did.
I had a look at some links on the internet after searching for 'cardboard bird costume' for inspiration (this one https://www.curbly.com/17490-colorful-cardboard-bird-costume-diy-for-halloween was quite good)

Next, I got CBC to measure my arms against my cardboard box and he then drew me a curved wing shape which I cut out twice.
I then made myself a curved feather shape template out of a cardboard scrap and proceeded to cut my 3 coloured papers into strips the length of the feather shape. I then piled 5-6 strips on top of each other and cut around the template- this meant it was much quicker than having to cut each one separately (and didn't bother drawing around it)
After they were all cut, I then started from the bottom of a wing and stuck feathers in rows on top of each other.  The process was repeated on the other wing. I just used Pritt Stick which meant the feathers stuck nice and flat.
It was very, very late on Sunday night by the time I finished that part so I didn't manage to do anything about how to attach them to me.

The next part of my costume took place on Tuesday evening on the train home from my orchestra in London (I say my orchestra- I've been playing with 4 orchestras recently but this is my most regular orchestra).

I was quite pleased to discover a red velvet fascinator base in my craft stash that I'd ordered ages ago (I mean at least 10 years) and forgot I had.  I then cut a beak shape out of orange felt and then some feather shapes from the other colours. I sewed these on and then I sewed three pieces of of thin elastic onto it to make it like a headband.  Don't look too closely as the thread got a massive knot in it and I never got around to trying to do something about it.  I didn't want to make a mask as I really dislike masks!

Very late on Wednesday night (as in 1.45am) after I'd returned from taking my school choir to the Royal Albert Hall and the train I was waiting for at 11.30am had broken down.... I searched for the orange and yellow clothes I could combine.  It's a pretty motley collection.

I DID buy a pair of orange trousers from the charity shop on Saturday for the costume but everything else - yellow blouse, red skirt, red leg warmers, red boots, red scarf -  were in my wardrobe already.

I took the orange cord from my Corduroy dress to school and then attached a bunch of yellow chiffon scarves (I use them with year 1 & Reception for dancing in music) to my waist so they hung like a tail.  I also remembered a pair of red crepe home-made pom poms from the Royal Albert Hall festival 6 years ago, which I'd saved and attached those with string to my shoulders.

The final, frustrating part was trying to attach the wings. I cut some cardboard strips and attached them with parcel tape and staples to the back (along with orange paper to cover the underside) but they KEPT falling off.  Suffice to say, I wore the wings for a very short amount of time as they were incredibly impractical and I couldn't teach year 1 music with them on!  Ah well!

A small note on Sustainability.  I think it is a great shame that there are SO many 'ready-made' costumes in horrid synthetic fabrics that get bought and wish people could/would have a go at making something.  A cardboard box can be made into MANY different costume ideas! It doesn't have to cost much, if anything!  This blog tutorial uses all old boxes to make a bird costume.

Our SMT team all made themselves Mr Men and Little Miss costumes out of cardboard boxes, coloured paper and paint and very good they looked too!

I LOVE the excitement of World Book Day and I really like dressing up but I DO get the stress of getting together a costume for parents but actually I do think it is really fun to try and make or cobble something together from what you've got or something from the Jumble sale/Boot sale or charity shop, not to go and buy something ready made (which I have never done!) .  Mags writes about it here and linked to this excellent article about it here on the Curiosity Approach.

It should be ABOUT the books, not JUST about the dressing up but I DO love the dressing up. My school likes to dress up but we do book activities during the day.  In Singing Assembly, I usually try to do a book themed song. This time, I ended up continuing with the Women's week theme and finishing teaching the song I'd written for them about Emmeline Pankhurst, Rosa Parks, Rosalind Franklin and Marie Curie. I did, however, point them in the direction of a very good children's book about inspirational women.

I decided this year to construct some small costumes from cardboard so I can offer those to children who aren't able to dress up. In one year 2 class, my colleague used a piece of red paper to make a 'The day the crayons quit' costume for a child who had no costume- she made a red cone for his head and a sign to pin to his jumper which was red and said RED in black letters.

Another colleague made a wonderful costume which was a GOLDEN ticket from Willy Wonka.  She got a golden yellow pillow case and carefully drew a Golden Ticket illustration on it in black pen (she has beautiful writing) and she wore her golden highlighter make-up on her face.

I loved one girl's costume which was a cardboard box covered in white paper - she was a card from Alice in Wonderland.

Another little girl had a very special costume as her uncle was the illustrator of a picture book and she had dressed up as the little girl in the story and looked exactly the same!!! I was so excited when she showed me her book!

Here's my little niece who dressed up as Bob, a Street Cat.  She's wearing a costume of mine from when I was a child!  My sister always makes her costumes or reuses our own carefully kept dancing costumes. 

I'd quite like to copy Bronte's costume here below- I have bear ears, a red hat wellies AND a duffle coat so I am tempted to use this as my inspiration next year!

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Apparently it was world book day yesterday and although a day late, I’d like to appreciate some characters that I not only love but have become some of my cosplay favoured #worldbookday #animatedcreature

A post shared by Bronte (@little_w0lf_16) on Mar 6, 2020 at 1:47pm PST

Next year, I am planning to make some small cardboard costumes for children to wear who don't have a costume such a my Gingerbread House idea, my rainbow fish idea (my musical chiffon scarves are great for this), Alice in the House and a few others.

Did you acknowledge World Book Day in any way?

xx