Superheros Dress-up day

On the last day of the term, we had superheros dress-up day. The focus is to acknowledge children's recent interests in superheros, like Transformers, ninjia, Spiderman and Ben 10. It's a way to get families involved, as at these young age, parents had to organize the outfits. We also want to communicate to parents that pretend play embodies many learning opportunities, especially for engaging boys.

Personally, I have a goal to use the dress-up event to extend children's imagination. So, I created a superhero character, Super Smiley Girl for myself. My super power was to put a smile on people's face. Therefore, I wore a cape full of stickers, and I simply ripped stickers off my cape to share with everyone. I put butterfly wings on my leggings because I was supposed to run fast. I also used a smiley face as my insignia. I explained my outfit and superpower to children, in order to encourage them to create superheros from their own imagination and creativity rather than from the movies or TV series.

Although most children came in with costumes brought from the shop, I was glad that children showed interests in my outfit and started to ask questions. I applies Desalyn De-Souza and Jacqueline Radell's ideas to guide children to make their own superheros. I declared that my super power was to make people happy; and I asked the children what supeheros usually do. I demonstrated to them how a superhero may look like and asked their suggestions for a unique superhero. We googled images to look at different insignias, and we talked about colors, shapes, letters and symbols of a potentially super insignia.

At the end of the kindy day, some children had developed their own supehero persona, and they asked me to help them make their own outfits. Well, that's what we will do after the school holiday, I promised them. I will collect fabrics, get my sewing machine ready, and buy some face paint as well. May the force be with us!