Everyone knows how important it is to engage our students. We all know that can also be a challenge. Every teacher has a unique way of bringing engagement into their classroom and lessons. Ya’ll, that’s what makes teachers amazing: we’re creative and unique! I am a big believer in keeping things simple and that’s our engagement style: simple. And our favorite, simple way to increase engagement in our classroom is COSTUMES! I love to dress up for themes, holidays, and lessons.
My love of costumes comes from my mom! Her favorite holiday was Halloween and she always came up with the most fun and creative costumes! It’s because of her that I dress up in my classroom and it helps make her a part of my classroom every year!
Costumes: A Few Things
- Our collection has been growing for years. And once we have a costume it’s used for years and years and years. We believe in getting things for our classroom that can be used in multiple ways for years and years!
- You DO NOT need to buy costumes. Make your own. They can be simple or elaborate.
- The idea of this post is to inspire you and encourage you to find your engagement tool. The idea is NOT to make you feel bad if you don’t wear costumes. YOU DO YOU! Find what works for you and your class!
My Favorite Costumes
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom is a must-read at the beginning of the year! This costume is made from sweatpants and a sweatshirt. The letters are felt stickers from Target. This costume is actually an interactive lesson. Students pick a letter, we say the letter and sound and they add the letter to the coconut tree.
Sweatpants and sweatshirt: Amazon
Letters: Target Dollar Spot
Kicking off ABC BOOTCAMP means we dress the part! Kicking off ABC BOOTCAMP means I dress as a soldier!
M is for Mustaches! M means a Mustache suit!
P is for pineapples! For letter P during ABC BOOTCAMP I wear my pineapple suit!
At the end of ABC BOOTCAMP, we have a built-in review week. As part of our review week, we flip our classroom into GIANT CANDYLAND! And giant Candy Land calls for a rainbow suit! This suit gets worn for R for Rainbows Day and during our weather unit and rainbows unit!
We celebrate fall with turkeys and leaves!
To practice sight words, we play our turkey sight word game. That means you dress as a turkey!
December is full of celebrations and fun. And it’s full of costumes!
Christmas tree costume: Walmart
Inflatable Giant Gingerbread Man!
January means arctic animals and penguins!
March means weather and St. Patrick’s Day. Weather means we read our favorite book ever: Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. And yes, there is a costume for that! This homemade costume is just gray sweats. For the food, I printed off food clipart and hot glued them to the sweats!
And St. Patrick’s Day wouldn’t be complete without a leprehcaun!
In the spring we also learn about dinosaurs and if you’re studying dinosaurs, you must be a paleontologist! This is another costume I pieced together. The shorts, boots, and shirt are mine! The hat is from Alive Studios.
Additional Costumes
Sometimes I wear costumes for specific lessons. The costumes are used as a hook on the first day of learning a skill to get the kids excited about the content!
For comparing numbers, I dress up as an alligator!
Creepy Carrots is a perfect book for October. We also use this costume when we study plants!
And if you’re doing Creepy Carrots, you also must do Creepy Underwear. And if you’re reading Creepy Underwear, you must wear a costume. But no one sells a creepy underwear costume, so you must be creative and make your own! I made this out of green foam board, white paper, and a black Sharpie!
Do you study zoo animals? For our Zoo Animals Research Project, you dress as a zookeeper! This is also the paleontologist costume!
Shirt and hat: Alive Studios
Introducing subtraction means Five Little Monkeys and five little monkeys means you dress the part!
Talk Like A Pirate Day!
Farm Unit!
Elf On The Shelf! I dress as the elf and hang out on the roof of my school during arrival and dismissal. This is a HUGE hit every year!
Elf costume on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3tvXNnM
For details on the lessons, units, themes, and activities discussed in this post check out these posts by clicking the image:
