Anonymous wrote:Last year the teacher sent out and email saying she was wearing her school shirt and anyone who wished could twin with her by wearing that same shirt or a shirt of the same color. I appreciated that a lot.

The boy moms in my youngest son's class (sorry haters) agreed that all the boys could just wear their favorite jerseys and skip "twinning". Almost all the boys did that. Nobody wants this twin day nonsense.

I agree OP. I hated it when I was a teen, I hated it when my kids were in ES and I hate it now as a teacher. It’s only fun for the handful of friends that has a close friend and has enough clothes or money to twin with them. It’s literally designed to exclude people. Sure not everyone has cute pajamas or a wacky hat, but twin day is purposefully exclusive.

Anonymous wrote:The teacher should randomly pair kids. It will be more interesting and take some actual effort for the kids to work together successfully.

No. Then it's an assignment.

Anonymous wrote:Schools do stupid non-academic stuff so that the academics look less terrible by comparison.

Or it's so that kids feel that school is safe and fun? But yeah I'm sure your conspiracy theory is the real reason...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The teacher should randomly pair kids. It will be more interesting and take some actual effort for the kids to work together successfully.

OP here and I've had a teacher do this and appreciated the idea but in reality this is miserable because then you are trying to coordinate with the parent of a kid your child may barely know, and parents are not always responsive or interested in this, and meanwhile your kid is pestering you about "have you talked to Lucy's mom yet? Does Lucy have a red dress? Do we need to buy a striped shirt? Lucy said she has a striped shirt!"

This is not the hassle I kneed on a Tuesday night, you know?

"Larla, figure out if Lucy has a purple, blue or pink shirt. If you want to twin with her, you have a lot of those colors. Otherwise you can wear your Cougar Elementary school shirts."

You are making it WAY more complicated than it needs to be.

My kids normally do something like wear their school spirit shirt for twin day. It's almost never more complicated than that.

Though I do think our school moved on to easier asks. Crazy hat day (not hair day) and wear a jersey day are all pretty basic.

I'd make this request to the PTA. The people running things might just be doing the same exact things year to year because they haven't gotten feedback. Word it nicely and see what happens.

Here's what you do: each year, pick a megatwin theme for dozens of people to join in on. Post your idea all around so everyone knows it and spreads the word.

Schools do stupid non-academic stuff so that the academics look less terrible by comparison.

Spirit week is such a pita. My kids would only do pajama day, the rest of the theme days they skipped.

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of things that are out of reach for kids in elementary, OP. Not just twin day. You should teach your children that not every event needs to be followed - it will be immensely more valuable than complaining that some events are too difficult to follow. Schools do not expect families to do it all.

We did pajama day, because the kids liked it, and it was low-effort for me. Since I'm a scientist and could help create projects, we participated in the science fairs. But that's it. There were so many events that we royally ignored!

OP again. I am fine picking and choosing which events to do, but spirit days are kid driven and my kids generally decide which days they want to participate in. And with virtually any other theme, I can just let them figure it out or spend 5 minutes helping them find something that will work. But if they want to do twin day, it often means I have to track down some other kid's parent at 8pm and try to figure something out and I don't want to.

Last year I even told them "if you want to do twin day, you need to sort it out on your own" because I was tired of the drama. This resulted in my DD's best friend's mom calling me frantically the day before saying "are you not letting the girls do twin day? DD is so sad!" and I had to explain that I hadn't disallowed it, I was just trying to encourage them to figure it out on their own, and it was a whole thing and I wound up working out with the other mom what they were going to wear. Sigh.

Please no twin day. Please!

Anonymous wrote:The teacher should randomly pair kids. It will be more interesting and take some actual effort for the kids to work together successfully.

OP here and I've had a teacher do this and appreciated the idea but in reality this is miserable because then you are trying to coordinate with the parent of a kid your child may barely know, and parents are not always responsive or interested in this, and meanwhile your kid is pestering you about "have you talked to Lucy's mom yet? Does Lucy have a red dress? Do we need to buy a striped shirt? Lucy said she has a striped shirt!"

This is not the hassle I kneed on a Tuesday night, you know?

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of things that are out of reach for kids in elementary, OP. Not just twin day. You should teach your children that not every event needs to be followed - it will be immensely more valuable than complaining that some events are too difficult to follow. Schools do not expect families to do it all.

We did pajama day, because the kids liked it, and it was low-effort for me. Since I'm a scientist and could help create projects, we participated in the science fairs. But that's it. There were so many events that we royally ignored!

Whoosh that went right over your head

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The teacher should randomly pair kids. It will be more interesting and take some actual effort for the kids to work together successfully.

Wow. No. Great way to ruin the whole day for an unpopular kid.

Unpopular kid in K? Ridiculous.

What is wrong with you?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The teacher should randomly pair kids. It will be more interesting and take some actual effort for the kids to work together successfully.

Wow. No. Great way to ruin the whole day for an unpopular kid.

Unpopular kid in K? Ridiculous.

Anonymous wrote:The teacher should randomly pair kids. It will be more interesting and take some actual effort for the kids to work together successfully.

Wow. No. Great way to ruin the whole day for an unpopular kid.