Party costumes.

Schools often organize costume parties for children, at least once a year during the carnival season. Usually, children receive ready-made costumes, often made of expensive materials, designed and sewn by adults. It has already been mentioned, how children like to dress up, so let them make their own party costumes. Naturally, they need to be helped, discuss, what should the costume be made of?, how, provide technical guidance.

How many educational and artistic misunderstandings there are, when it comes to kids costumes. The role of the costume, in which the child should dress up for play, is completely different from ordinary clothes for everyday use. The costume should work on the viewers, for the participants of the fun, should interest them with your ingenuity. The life of the costume is short. The same costume put on for the second party is no longer fun, is no surprise. Therefore, it makes no sense to spend a lot of time and money on it, it makes no sense to sew expensive costumes from velvets, silks, strong, solid and trivial in idea, some gypsies, They are Japanese, toadstools, pages, Cracovian, etc. The costume cost so much, it's a pity, to be for single use only, so the child wears it for several games, and still sometimes, as soon as he grows out of it, one of his younger siblings inherits from him.

Costumes made by children can be made of very cheap materials, they do not have to be sewn in full, it depends on the idea. Sometimes the accessories alone are enough, which, combined with ordinary clothing, look very funny and interesting. How much artistic invention and technical skill, how much ingenuity children show in collecting the necessary materials, sometimes long before the game. Such e.g. milk bottle caps, properly smoothed and trimmed, are perfect for knight armor, stars on the sorcerer's robe, decorative chains and many more, many more accessories. Let's remember, that an idea breeds another idea. A simple beret with a colored paper feather attached and curls of shavings sewn on may be the headdress of a fair-haired pageboy. If you get a belt with a silver buckle (from bottle caps) and a cardboard gladiolus covered with silver or gold paper, character is clearly emphasized. A piece of dark-colored fabric with stars and moons sewn or glued on will make a great sorcerer's cloak-cloak, and to complete the whole figure you will need a tall conical cap made of black paper, but also the ship, which can be made of long strips of paper glued to the half mask, covering the lower part of the face. In the mask you need to cut a hole for the mouth and attach two ribbons to be tied at the back of the head. From old stockings, cleanly washed, you can make wonderful braids for Cinderella, and the outfit will be completed with white doves or just one attached to the arm. The pigeon also needs to be done in a very simple and witty way, by folding and cutting the paper, some glue may be needed. Such a funny pigeon should be a pigeon symbol. Of course, this applies not only to this one example. In expressing the character's character, you need to skilfully use symbols, abbreviations and simplifications. Color combinations play a very important role in costumes, that can emphasize a character's expression or spoil it. A combination of three colors: blue, yellow and pink with weak qualities will have a naive expression and it would be difficult to achieve an expression of eerieness through such a combination of colors in a sorcerer's or Baba Yaga's costume. A list like this would be more appropriate here, like violet, black and dark red or dark green. As in all matters of plastic solutions, and there are no rules here. Must see, try, choose accordingly.

Preparing costumes for a children's play or even just partial accessories is a lot of work for a teacher. The mothers of the children should help him with this, and they are already necessary when changing children before playing, when you need to pin something while you wait, sew on, squeak. The organizers of the fun sometimes provide prizes for the best costumes. Such prizes should only be awarded for costumes made by children, otherwise, the reward loses all educational meaning.

Sometimes all you need is a mask. If there is a lot of clay available, you can make a mask by gluing layers of paper (as described in the manufacture of cups) on a modeled clay mask smeared with oil, so that the paper does not stick to the clay. On the clay, put the first layer of pieces of newspaper soaked only in water, and then dip the next layers in the paste. The last layer of paper - fifth or seventh, must be white, because the mask needs to be painted, you can even use button paint with an admixture of white poster or gluing glue. However, making such masks is troublesome and takes quite a long time, because you have to wait, until the layers of paper are dry. You can also make masks in an easier way. We take a piece of paper quite soft, we put it on the face (foreign for now), marked with pencil or charcoal, where we will make holes for the eyes and mouth. Then we cut the paper around the face and fold it, we do something like tailor's darts, in a word, we model the mask. Once we have the form ready, we put it on a stronger paper, from which we cut out the right mask and sew or glue its parts. Such a basic mask (best, if the teacher made the form) can be finished at will, so glue the mustache, beard, draw symmetrical lines, colic, triangles.