Field Trip Shirts and ID cards

Thursday is our co-op day.  Since it's summer time, we expect to do even more field trips. One day on a field trip this year, it occurred to me I couldn't remember exactly what my children were wearing.  What if they got lost?!  It was a pretty busy day at the zoo that day and completely possible, but a lot of the children there were in large school groups with matching shirts.  So I've been thinking on this idea for some time.  If we had matching shirts, I could easily see my kids from a distance and could describe what they were wearing if we still managed to be separated.  My sister-in-law has a cutting machine so we designed our school shirts, cut out the stencils, and painted the shirts.  The kids had a nice time finger painting, too.  Ms A wasn't in to it and I was, frankly, afraid to let Ms K have a try.  But Ms Z enjoyed exploring paint possibilities.  We just used the craft paint since we had quite a stash to explore with.  And it washed off their hands easily.

 I think the shirts turned out nicely.  Each kid has the same front.  The back has their initial pretty large on the back and their hand prints, for those who didn't mind touching the paint. I look forward to calling to the kids "Put on your field trip shirts!" and seeing the look of wonder at what adventures we would go on today. :)  Bonus:  I bought 5 shirts for about $8 and only used 3.  I already had the paint and my sister-in-law already had her cutter and paper.  That means this craft cost me about $2 per shirt and I have 2 extras!  Whoot!

Said sister-in-law also has Adobe Photoshop, so we designed some pretty swanky ID cards.  The QR code goes straight to our website, in case there's ever question about the validity of our school, and it lends a certain professionalism to them, I think. We'll update cards and photos each year, probably in the summer so there's little rush and excellent opportunities. Feel free to copy our design.  The black bars are for privacy of our information.  We had such a tough time finding a free download for a Photoshop compatible template that we designed our own.  We had to leave her house before we could finish making a generic template, but once we can, I'll post it here for anyone else who wants one with all the layers editable. We plan to order these cards as photo prints and laminate them for protection.   In case you don't know, ID cards are great for getting discounts at museums, movie theaters, and more.  If you bring in your report cards, many companies offer free or discounted items for As each semester/term.  The cards serve as identification for obtaining your own library card.  There are probably other advantages to making your own identification cards for your homeschool, but these are a few that come to mind. Bonus:  I ordered these from Walgreens for about 21 cents each!  Extra whoot! What do you think? Do you have "official" t-shirts or ID cards?