Dressing Up Clothes

[Guest terrydoo73]

We are working with pre-preschool children and are wondering if we could do more to improve our dressing up area. At present we have out a Barbie dress and a carnival skirt. Since January we have had out little coats, hats and gloves as well as boilersuits. We are now moving out of winter into spring and just wondered what we could change about this area. Our focus will be on growth and in particular have a farming theme running through the next 2 months. We have a problem in that 1 little girl loves putting on the dress nearly every day and there is a bit of competition between 2 others to be there first!!

 

Any help with suggestions and possible places for locating such would be great.

[Fredbear]

Hi terrydoo73.

We have built up our dressing up role-play outfits over many years, some bought, some kindly donated by ex pre-school families.

We have also looked out for special offers in the local supermarkets, they often sell off older stock sometimes.

Might be worth a call to your local Tescos, Sainsbury's, Asda's, to see if they would be willing to donate you any, are you a charity setting.

If you pm me i will see if i can send you some of our duplicates or spares.

[Rea]

Pieces of fabric in different lengths, widths and colours can be used for anything. Throw in some bags, hats, purses, specs, mobile phones, pens, leaflets an they can be anything they want to be.

[Inge]

ours too was a huge collection of real clothes mostly donated by parents, staff etc , as well as those bought like police, fire, hospital uniforms of all kinds.. etc.. we had a selection of ethnic clothes in there which were in our case donated by parents, but can be bought..

 

children loved and used them lots..amazing how fast it built up once we asked parents...

 

shoes were always in use as were the bags, necklaces, scarves, hats, phones, etc etc.

[samwise38]

Charity shops often also have some terrific finds, both purpose made dressing up clothes, and bags, hats, scarves, fabric etc.

Have fun!!

[Rufus]

Do you have dressing up clothes out all the time? Just wondered what everyone does.

[Emmawill]

Yes we put out dressing up trolley out every day . the children love it , some children just like to go throught it while others choose an outfit, or a hat and wear it for the whole session whilst carrying out oter activities.. We do place themed clothes to the themed role play areas as well.

[Fredbear]

Yes everyday same as Emmawill.

Do change it around often so it stays fresh and new.

[narnia]

we have ours out all the time, though we do change them around from time to time.We did have them on a trolley, but it wasn't very robust( one of those white wire ones, with a basket at the bottom and hooks at the top),and it broke. ( I used the basket part for our art folders to go in, but am getting a big book hanging trolley for those instead, as it will take up less space and the folders will stay tidier in individual bags)...anyway, I bought a set of Community Playthings coat hooks, so the dressing up things stay in one place ( to begin with!). We used to buy a lot of our clothes in Woolworths, but like others have said, now we look in Sainsburys, or ebay.

Edited February 24, 2011 by narnia

[Guest]

Do you have a home bargains or quality save store near you? They have some lovely dressing up clothes really cheap

[Guest terrydoo73]

No we don't have these in Northern Ireland. Have tried a few stores today but nothing unfortunately.

[samwise38]

we also have ours out all the time on a permanent trolley with a mirror on one end that serves as part of our continuous provision. We do change what is on it every few weeks, so that we can take home and wash things, and also ring the changes. However, we don't remove anything that any particular child is really attached to. Sometimes, children need to put on their 'uniform' to enable them to carry on with the rest of their activities.

 

We also have a dressing up trolley outside, which we fill with tabards and hats if the weather permits. (There are limits to the amount of washing and drying we will do!)

[Guest]

Hi

 

Yes we have dressing up clothes out all the time and we change some of them to link in with topics and interests from the childre. Some clothes stay out all the time if the children are really attached to them but as the others say we change them to wash them and tie in with topics.

 

I usually get ours from home and bargain, asda, b and m's place like that that arent expensive the children love them!

 

Kate

[Guest]

we have ours out everyday but we are a pack away setting so have to bring it in and out everyday, the problem we have is the one we have only has wheels on one end and is soooooo heavy to manoever. we are looking for an easier option at the moment as its also not very long so always looks so untidy and a mess.......... this is an area we are looking at improving just not sure how at the moment

[Guest terrydoo73]

We changed all our dressing up clothes on Friday putting out 2 new dresses and I managed to get a lovely pair of silver sandals and pink clogs in the local charity shop at the weekend. It will be interesting to see if they notice the change! Might end up having to bring back the Barbie dress though!! Our dressing up is a continuous provision in a purpose built trolley (not on wheels) with a mirror on the end.

 

Noticed on here that some people let the children put the dressing up clothes on and then go to the different areas in the playroom. We limit ours to just the home corner, small world, construction and book area - they are not allowed to have the clothes on to do painting, sand and water play, jigsaws or playdough simply as they could be destroyed and we want to teach the principle of putting away to move on. Is this correct?

[Panders]

I personally allow the children to wear the dressing up outfits anywhere in the provision they chose to, if they are at messy activities they would be wearing an apron regardless of what they are wearing underneath so don't find that a problem, given how much effort it can be to get them in and out of dressing up clothes, because they can't always do it on their own, you would spend a lot of time managing this if you had more children than you do at the moment.

 

As you build up your stock of clothes and fabrics whilst you will want to keep them in clean good repair, they won't feel quite so precious maybe as they do now.#

 

We had a similar problem to your Barbie outfit some years ago with a Thunderbirds outfit. We taught the children to share it they either did alternate mornings, or an hour each. Their obsession with the outfit did not last for long and they learnt a valuable lesson on how to share fairly.

[Inge]

we did restrict the dressing up clothes area - painting and craft area being the two... despite aprons they still got it onto the clothes and some of the children expressed their dislike at having paint on dressing up clothes, despite washing them, particularly some of the popular items..

 

and don't forget to look for the boy type things.. we had children's jackets and gilets, men's shoes, caps from charity shops, but often found these hard to source so did have to buy some new..