I’m surprisingly ‘into’ this whole pirate themed week. So much so that I’m breaking my rule of refusing to watch a single Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I’ve been on the ride at Disney World, J dressed as Captain Sparrow one year for Halloween, but the movies have just never appealed to me. I think it might be because of Kiera Knightly. She’s not my cup of tea, which of course is so awkward as she likes me so much…
Moving swiftly onwards from my irrational dislike of Bend it like Beckham cast members: back to kid’s crafts. Today we made pirate masks. All you’ll need is to print the templates and attach some string or elastic. Throughout all this stay at home and craft with the kids adventure one of the things I’ve loved the very most is coloring. It’s just so incredibly relaxing to color, and the boys love that I’m doing the same activity as them. The conversation we’ve had whilst sharing markers and picking colors are some I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
For the craft you will need
- Printer to print templates
- scissors to cut templates out
- markers or crayons for coloring
- elastic or string
- Templates for masks (linked at bottom)
The weather is still pretty good this week, so I threw together one outdoor activity for the boys to do together. The aim was for them to grab a sight words from a line of them hanging on the deck. Then they had to go to the box of “treasure” and find the individual letters that spelled out their sight word. I was definitely too easy of an activity for William and I knew he’d be done quickly. So I added in another dimension. I used the stepping stones from their “The Floor is Lava” (Buy in the US here and the UK here) so that they had to jump from step to step from the back door, across the deck, down to the line of sight words. then once they’d detached one they had to jump across to the side where the treasure was. It was definitely much more of a physical challenge than a mental one. There is absolutely nothing better though than activating kinetic learning by sending kids to actually “do” something as they’re learning.
A couple of tips I picked up along the way: Having the cards in the bowl as a treasure chest was not a good idea. It took them so long to dig through all the letters to find what they needed. So after a couple of words we just dumped them all out on the floor and did it that way. At first they were laying completed words out on the ground, but it wasn’t that satisfactory. So I taped a couple of senate strips to the wall and let them use those. If you’re doing this for more than one kid DEFINITELY space out where you put the sentence strips. I didn’t and they were on top of each other.
FINAL MOST IMPORTANT TIP: if it’s windy don’t do this outside. We had to keep laying out all the stepping stones again and again and it just wasn’t very enjoyable. We agreed it was a 10/10 activity, pulled down to a 4/10 because we had to keep stopping and starting every time because of the wind.
In a non pirate related side note – that game “The Floor is Lava” has been the most awesome addition to our household. It comes with a spinner and various game ideas in the instructions, but we just fling them around the house and jump from one to the other. So many rainy days have been saved from hours of whininess through playing it. Would definitely recommend.
LINKS AND SOURCES TO RESOURCES
Raising Truffles 