The thing about theme days
I love a good theme day.
There was nobody as excited as me when I finally got to participate in my first crazy hair day at our elementary school two years ago.
I was delighted in hot-gluing LEGO bricks to barrettes and turning our son’s hair into a LEGO tornado. Our daughter still talks about how much she loved the “cupcake hair” I’d made by tugging her ballet bun through a hole in a paper plate.
For my own hairdo, I wound a high ponytail inside an empty, two-litre Diet Coke bottle so it “poured” out the spout. I was really proud of myself until I saw a student who’d done the same thing, except hers even poured into a Styrofoam cup. She clearly won.
The occasional theme day is fun for everyone. But do you know what is not fun for everyone? A new theme each week — especially when it’s for an afterschool activity you’re paying to attend.
I was irritated when a notice came home from one of the kids’ activities on the very first day, announcing that there would be a new theme every single week for the term.
It started with pyjama day, which was easy enough. Then it was favourite shirt day and I had to make sure the favourite T-shirt was clean and ready to go, instead of what they would normally wear to class.
Then it spiralled into outer space day (dress like an astronaut or alien) and silly sock day and favourite holiday week. I suppose it would be simple enough to throw a Christmas-themed T-shirt on your kid, if you had one (we didn’t) and you had easy access to it in the beginning of October.
The weekly themes are getting old — fast. It’s already enough of an effort to get my child ready, fed and delivered to their class a few minutes early. All of these theme weeks mean that we, the parents, need to hustle to get their child the appropriate themewear or else our child will feel left out or that they’ve done something wrong by not dressing up.
The kids already love the class and are happy to be there, unlike school, for example, where it becomes routine and perhaps they need a little fun to jazz it up sometimes.
Adding a random theme to the mix for a fun, after-school activity is just unnecessary, in my opinion.
Or maybe I’m just cranky because my child is already asking for a ringmaster costume for when circus week rolls around.