Playing Dress Up

This week has been American Education Week. Our school had a spirit week to celebrate. Consequently, I've almost been late to school every day but today, when I had a workshop and didn't have to dress up. Don't get me wrong--I love a good excuse to wear jeans or pajama pants, but dress up days are a lot more work when you have three participants to outfit! Especially if you wait to make costumes until the morning of. Or one of the turds participants has an extra-difficult week and has to wear "fancy" shoes one day. (Never mind that the fancy shoes were voluntarily worn on green and gold day, not because they were green or gold, but because it was the dresser-uppers idea himself and he may or may not have misplaced one of his regular shoes.)

Here's a break down of our week:

Monday - Reading can take you places. - Dress as your favorite book character. 

Reed was super excited about his idea (after he got over not being able to dress like Clay, a dragon from the Wings of Fire series)... until he got to school and no one knew who the heck he was but the teachers. He was especially perturbed when someone thought he was Santa!

Calvin was equally pumped about his character: a golden samurai. From what book he hails, I have no idea. I tried really hard to talk him out of the three-year-old, coming-apart-at-the-seams (quite literally) Wolverine muscle suit. But he reasoned that if he wore his new, black GI Joe muscle suit, he would look too much like Batman.  The Batman mask is to give him "things like this" on his head, because apparently all samurais have horns...  I pretty much avoided and/or apologized for him all day. 

Tuesday - Turning back the clock on education. - decade day

My fancy-clothes loathers actually went for 1920s garb when they found out they could wear their "cool dude" fedoras. Reed insisted on having a curly mustache and a monocle. I hear they were all the rage in the 1920s... 

They actually liked their get-up this day (I let them wear tennis shoes, even though it bothered me deeply), but you can't tell in any of the pics. I forgot to take their picture until 5th graders were already coming into my classroom. So, I did what any good mom would do. I made them stop and embarrassed the heck out of them before I hugged them and told them to have a good day! 

Wednesday - Be thankful for a formal education - Wear your best dress clothes. 

This was Grandparent's Day at the school, so we wanted to impress. 

This was not a fan favorite. One person had informed me the night before, "I'm NOT wearing a button shirt," so I didn't try to send him with a noose. Gotta pick your battles with that one. They both wore undershirts so they could pull a Clark Kent at recess.  One even brought spare shoes in his backpack. 

Thursday: You don't have to be a nerd to get a good education! - Dress like a geek. 

Like an idiot, I didn't make those glasses until it was almost time to walk out the door. Like an even bigger idiot, I taught the boys how to talk like Urkel. Already loud voices + (badly impersonated geek x 3) + an enclosed van - adequate time to get to school = full-on obnoxiousness! The only sanity saver was the calculator I let Reed borrow for his pocket. They took turns punching in numbers, fascinated with the results. Then Calvin insisted on borrowing my jumbo classroom calculator, even though it wouldn't fit in his pocket. They played with it after school in lieu of the usual Lego.com games. I guess they really got into character for this day!