Welcome to our “Shiver Me Timbers – Pirate Week” – an at home camp filled with days of relaxed learning and fun themed activities all themed to oh-so-fascinating Pirates! For our first day, we learned some pirate lingo, set up our camp space, and introduced the basic history of pirates through some great books!
Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic. We started off with setting up the camp area with upcycled pirate decorations! Like all days, we added in some interesting books and some writing / storytelling prompts to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!
INTRO
Most kids are likely familiar with pirates from popular cartoons or movies and so mixing in some hands-on fun and themed activities is a great way to get them engaged and learning throughout the summer! They might not even realize their learning! We like to start off our day by letting the kids know what the topic of the day is and then asking them what they know!
If you’ve got a slightly larger group, it might be fun to create a ‘code of conduct’ for the week as well 🙂
DECORATE THE CAMP AREA
Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week!
What is a pirate without a ship? (Okay, so technically, a pirate doesn’t have to be on the sea, but since most of the popular stories and movies feature maritime pirates, we went this route). For the main portion of our camp decorations, we “built” a ship out of a large upcycled box and added in a few details. We created a few portholes for our box as well as some smaller portholes as frames for pictures of each kid. We found the idea on: Make a Cardboard Ship Wheel and Fake Portholes from www.welcome-to-the-woods.com. It was also fun to watch the kids pretend play inside the “ship” while incorporating some of the things they learned!
Since we were painting for the day, we also painted some rocks we collected around the park and neighborhood. We used gold paint to make them look like gold nuggets. Once they were dry, we used them in an outdoor seek and find treasure hunt activity and also to decorate the camp area 🙂
WHAT TO WATCH
We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Below are some of the videos we picked from for the day:
The first two links were short videos with fun facts for kids and the second two are some kid-friendly pirate-themed cartoons that have several episodes you can pick from.
- The Definitive History of Pirates [Animation for Kids] by Zoe (4m)
- Pirate Facts for Kids by Fun Facts for Kids (4m)
- Disney’s Jake & the Neverland Pirates Series
- Nick Jr’s Santiago and the Seven Seas Series
FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS
What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!
For our snack of the day, we munched on some ‘parrot crackers’ though did serve them in cute little paper treasure chests.
READING
It’s no secret that reading helps prevent that summer slide. Some even say this is the most important. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned!
We had a few non-fiction books for the day but didn’t get through all of them as there’s a good deal of great information in all of them. Little kids may need help reading through the pages, but they’re definitely well worth the effort! The handbook also has some lift-up flaps which are always fun for little ones 🙂
- Pirates by Suzan Boshouwers
- The Ultimate Pirate Handbook
- The Amazing History of Pirates by Philip Steele
WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS
Just like reading, writing helps prevent that summer slide by both encouraging their creativity but also their motor skills and penmanship.
If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: PIRATE, SHIP, PARROT
If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!
- If you were a pirate, what do you think would be the most exciting part of a pirate life? What about the scariest?
THANK YOU!!!
Thank you for checking out our at home camp article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest
Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Pirate Ideas or DIY At Home Camps!
Happy Learning!
