More Pirates!!

I noticed that a few people have been checking out my post about Pirates and I came across some pictures and a few more things that they might be interested in.  I won’t re-post all the things that are on the previous post.  I already shared a fun Pirate book that my children loved making.  I also talked about a parent/child Pirate Night that we enjoyed.  These parent/child activities were a great opportunity to educate parents about how children learn, fun things they could do at home, and it gave them a chance to see their child in a school setting.  After participating in one of these activities parents often told me that they saw behaviors I had mentioned – like rushing through work, wanting to go and play instead of do projects, etc.  The best part of activities like this was making a special memory for parents and their kids.

I already shared the check-off list of activities that were available to parents and children, but here is another peek.

Here is a short description of some of the activities:
Activity explanations

When the parents and children arrive at school they each find a grocery bag that we decorated ahead of time, and a check off list.

Then they are free to complete the activities in any order they choose, there is no pressure to do everything.  I typed up directions for each activity and mounted them on 3 sided signs for each center.  The same directions were on all 3 sides so they could be read from different directions.  For the Pirate Night I made the signs from red, white and black paper.

 

I don’t have the directions for every activity but I am happy to share the ones I saved:

I had a step by step chart to help children draw a skull and crossbones on the front, we also used this to decorate the bags for the evening.

Again I didn’t save my original chart so I remade it for you.  Feel free to improve on it!!

 

Great hook!!!  He is also holding the kaleidoscope we made!

We did not always cook hot dog octopus for dinner – sometimes I just ordered pizzas, other times sloppy joes – I just tried to give all the food pirate names!  We had flat wafer cookies we called pirate planks.

I cut these directions in half and stood them up on the food table.

Pirate Planks

Octopus

Blackbeard

more activities

Here is the board we made for picture taking:

Here is another view of our hats, and check out the cute envelope shark!

Here is how we walked the plank!

Another favorite activity was using the looking into the water with the masks

They loved making the pirate puppets

 

Here is another note I sent home before our special day, asking for some supplies:

send in stuff

We also read a lot of pirate books, made the Pirate Book that I already described, and did other activities in class.  Here are some of the books we read:

 

Here is a writing activity that we sometimes did after reading Tough Boris and talking about parrots:

I added a box for an illustration and lines for text, to make this look like the paper we used during writer’s workshop.  I know teachers use all different types of lines for HWT, midlines, etc. so I just gave you the basic template.

pet parrot

Some of my clipart was from PC Crafters – Pirate Adventures by Amy Dott Harmer (I love all her clipart!)

There is more very cute pirate clipart on DJInkers – Pirates Plunder

I also have some samples and ideas from a parent/child day on Oceans that I will be sharing later.

I hope you might find something you can use!  The kids absolutely loved this theme!

Pirates

My class was studying the ocean, and just for fun, we made Pirate books!

I usually began our Pirate study with a yes/no graph – Were pirates good guys or bad guys?  Then we had a discussion, and decided that even though pirates were bad guys it was fun to pretend about them.

The eye patch on this cover lifted up – it was glued at the top, and underneath we glued a large colored jewel (from a craft store).  I made up a story about how this pirate was fighting and got his eye poked out, so he hid the jewel that he had stolen in the empty eye hole where no one would find it.  The kids loved it, and totally knew we were pretending.  We used a hole punch – one of my favorite activities to strengthen hands – to punch a hole in one ear and used a sparkly pipe cleaner for the earring.  Some years when we didn’t have time to make this book we used this face and made pirate masks.

We glued on a popsicle stick for the mast and used a brad fastener to make the plank swing out.  I had a step by step chart for drawing the skull and crossbones on the flag, and glued it on with a toothpick flagpole.  Of course I reminded the children to add details.

We added details with paint on this page, and the wing moved with a brad fastener.  We read Mem Fox’s book – Tough Boris.

The children drew and labeled their maps (which tied into a social studies objective) and then we wadded them up so they would look wrinkled and tore off all the straight sides.  We read Grandma and the Pirates!

I also loved reading the Little Critter book – Pirate Soup.  This was a fun book to make with the children!

We also had a special pirate night – I called these Parent/child evenings and invited my class to bring an adult to school for dinner and fun activities.  Here are a few links to our invitation and some of the activities.

Invitation

I tried to give at least a month’s notice, and lots of reminders about a special activity like this.

check off

Each family received a check off list of all the activities and they could do them in any order.  I really thought these special days were a great time to educate parents about our curriculum, how children learn through play and give them ideas about things they could do at home.  I made sure to include math, language arts and science activities.

some activities

At each activity I made a 3 sided sign with the directions on all sides.  These are a few we did.

Walk the plank

I brought in a children’s wading pool and my husband built a plank to walk over it.  Inside the pool I put a large crocodile, shells and rubber ocean animals.

I loved using Jack Hartmann’s Pirate song.  This was another simple song we learned:

Little pirate song