This year was our first year with a child at ‘big’ school, so it was our first real experience of the competitive costume gala known as World Book Day. Luckily, both our daughter’s school and the parents in it are pretty sensible; the school gave a week’s notice via a letter in which the head laid out in no uncertain terms that the buying or making of expensive and complicated costumes was really unnecessary – this was to be very much a home-made, celebratory, non-competitive and above all book-focussed World Book Day (they’re rebuilding the school library at the moment, too). Plus the other mums and dads at the school gates this morning were really great at making encouraging noises in the direction of all the kids. Yay, community!

Anyway, as usual, because we are rubbish and busy loving and devoted parents, Ash and I left it to just a couple of days before to agree with R what she wanted to be on the day; we steered her away from the standard Disney kit, because we wanted her to think outside the obvious a bit. It’s no secret from the whole of the internet that I love Disney and Marvel (yes, that IS me in the Daily Mail wearing silly leggings) with an almost embarrassing intensity, but I was determined that this year at least we wouldn’t go the ready-made route. No judgement of those who did, do or want to you understand.

Anyway, I cannot remember whose idea it was to be a crayon from The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt and Oliver Jeffers; it MIGHT have been mine, but anyway R chose to be Red Crayon as it’s her favourite colour – handy, since she already has a load of red clothes. We were determined to spend pennies on this, if that, so in the end the only thing we had to buy was the card, because the coloured paper we had was too small, and the elastic.  So, what we used was:

• Red clothes (child’s own)
• Red card
• Black card
• Pencil
• Elastic
• Stapler
• Scissors
• Tape
• Needle and thread
• Writing paper and markers

I don’t really need a step-by-step guide here, do I? A few points of note:

I sewed the ‘belt’ trim to the t-shirt because it’s a really old, short t-shirt and I don’t care if it gets holes in it. I actually thought about stapling it on, but I wanted her to easily be able to rip it off if it annoyed her during the day – she still needs to focus on what she’s doing at school after all. Ash made the hat, which was a basic semi-circle shaped into a cone held together with tape and staples; as I said, we did splash out on some elastic to keep it on (and of course cut it slightly the wrong length so it falls off every time she looks down, but let’s face it – that was never going to stay on in school anyway).

The letter to Dung Duncan was actually R’s own idea, and she copied it out herself which, given she’s only 4, I was very proud of; she wanted to do a copy for every person in her class, which is a genius thought but not when you have it at 8:00pm the night before and your bedtime is 7:30pm max. I think the cutest part was when she addressed it to her teacher but then decided to give it to her friend instead and crossed out the name on the back. Second hand letters are the most thoughtful, aren’t they?

So there you go. Less than £5 spent, and we needn’t even have done that if we’d been prepared to cobble together smaller pieces a bit more (or had a better stocked craft pile. Or thought of making a paper chin strap for the hat. Or, or, or…).

And now looking forward to spending the book token with R. Perhaps she’ll go for The Day the Crayons Came Home!