pirates Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Why Did Pirates Wear Eye Patches? Experiment

October 6, 2017 By Deirdre

JDaniel discussed Why Did Pirates Wear Eye Patches? with one of his teachers a few years ago on Talk Like a Pirate Day. She told him that pirates frequently had to move above and below decks, from daylight to near darkness. It was said that they wore a patch over one eye to keep it dark-adapted outside. On this final day of 5 Days of Pirate printables, I thought it would be fun to do a STEM experiment to see if wearing an eye patch while playing made it easier to see when you moved into a darkened area.

Why Did Pirates Wear Eye Patches? Experiment

While you could conduct this experiment without a recording printable, I have created a Why Did Pirates Wear Eye Patches Experiment printable. Your children can record their insights from the experiment on this document.

Getting Started

Your children will need to wear an eye patch in a brightly lit room or outside for a short time. We wore ours for about 15 or 20 minutes.

One Eye is Ready for Darkness

As they move into a darkened room or darker space, they can slowly lift up the eye patch as they go into the darkened space. They will have one eye that is dark adapted and one that will need to adjust the darkness.

Next, have your children describe orally or record on the printable what they could see as they walked into the darkened area.

Switching the Patch

The part of the Why Did Pirates Wear Eye Patches? experiment has children move the eye patch from one eye to the other. As your children move from a bright area to a darkened one they will switch the eye that is covered with the eye patch. The once covered eye should be able to see better in the darkness. Afer all it is dark-adapted.

Next, have your children share orally with your or write down what they could see with the eye patch on.

Creating a Conclusion

You will want to take time to have your children share with you their experience with the eye patch. It will be fun to see if they felt that it helped to move the eye patch from one eye to the other. Finding out what they saw as they moved into the darkness will be fun too. Not every pirate may have focused on the same things.

Here are the other pirate printables that were shared this week:

R Controlled Vowel Worksheets

Long Vowel Worksheets

Subtraction Worksheets Used to Play Treasure Chest

Parrot Bingo Cards that Explore Colors

Printable Bingo Cards That Explore Colors with Parrots

October 4, 2017 By Deirdre

It is day three of Pirate Printable Week! Today I have a set of printable bingo cards that explore colors. Each of the printable bingo cards for kids displays eight parrots. Each one features a single color. These would be a great part of a pirate unit or after reading a fun pirate themed book. (You will find a list of fun pirate books for kids a the end of this post.)

Printable Bingo Cards for Kids with Parrots

Before you get started you will need to download and print the Printable Bingo Cards that Explore Color with Parrots. The parrots and the skull in the free space are all colored clip art as well as the parrot color cards.You will need to print out the cards on a color printer.

The links below are affiliate links.

The only other supply you will need for the bingo game is something for your children to place on top of the color parrots. We used gems as our bingo markers. It might be fun to use gold coins Beistle 100 Piece Gold Plastic Pirate Treasure Embossed Coins Western Theme Supplies Casino Party Favors, 1.5″ a bingo covers.

One Player Bingo

You can give a pile of the parrot color cards and a bingo card to your child. They can take one color card of the pile at a time. After they say the name of the color, they can place on bingo marker on the parrot that is the same color on the card. When they have three markers in a row or column, they can say BINGO or ARRR!

Multiplayer Bingo

You will need to give each of your children one of the printable bingo cards and some bingo markers. Then your children can take turns picking up a card from the stack and calling out the color of the parrot on the card. Anyone with that colored parrot will cover it with a bingo marker. When one of the children has three markers in a row or column, they can say BINGO or ARRR!

Pirate Themed Books for Kids

I love tying activities I create for kids to children’s books with a similar theme. Two of my favorite pirate books areHow I Became a Pirate and Pirate Nap: A Book of Colors. They both have fun illustrations and are great fun to read aloud. I bet your children will love them.

Other Pirate Themed Activities

Long Vowel Sounds Worksheets

Five Little Pirates Puppet and Rhyme

R Controlled Vowel Printables

Five Little Pirates Pirate Craft and Printable

September 14, 2016 By Deirdre

Whether you are getting ready to celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day on September 19th or you exploring pirates with your children, the Five Little Pirates rhyme will be fun to sing. I thought your children might like to have a pirate puppet of their own to sing and dance to the song. I created a puppet pirate craft that children can decorate.

Before I share with you some decorating ideas, let me share the Five Little Pirates rhyme with you.

Five Little Pirates Rhyme

Five little pirates heading from the shore

One jumped overboard

And now there are four

Four little pirates now out at sea

One jumped overboard

And now there are three

Three little pirates with nothing to do

One walked the plank

And now there are two

Two little pirates having lots of fun

One drank all the first mate’s juice

And now there is one

One little pirate sitting in the sun

He decides to abandon ship

And now there are none.

Pirate Craft Supplies and Decoration Ideas

Supplies

Pirate Puppet Printable
Scissors
Material or Cut-Up Bandanas
Crayons, Markers, or Colored Pencils
Glue Sticks

Getting the Pirate Finger Puppet

First, you will need to download the set.

Pirate Finger Puppet

Second, if you don’t have Acrobat Reader you will need to download it. The algorithm page is an Acrobat Reader PDF file.

Third, you must go to your download file and open the page. You may be asked if you want the file to open right after you download it. You won’t have to hunt for it in your download file if you are.

Steps for Putting the Puppets Together

First, you will need to decide if you want to cut the puppets out for your children or cut them out for them in advance.

Next, you can have your children color in their puppets with whatever drawing materials you like. I thought you might use crayons, markers, or colored pencils. You may have other drawing materials would like for them to use.

Then you could have them cut and paste material onto their puppets to give them texture if you like. They could give their pirate a felt eye patch or mini bandana made of part of a real bandana.

Once your children have their puppets completed, you can work on the rhyme.

Tip: My son and I tried having more than one of the puppets on our hands at the same time. It was fun to try and make all of the puppets dance at the same time.

If you like this pirate craft, here are some more crafts based on Five Little rhymes and songs.

5 Little Crows
Five Little Apples
5 Little Firefighters
Five Little Starfish

Kids Activities- Gold Coin Vowel Sound Drop

June 17, 2014 By Deirdre

Working on the different sounds vowels helps children who are learning to read master the sounds. Interacting with vowels sounds in fun pirate themed kids activities helps children identify words that they know that contain each of the vowel sounds. It also helps to reinforce the vowels sounds children already in their auditory memory.

This is one of those kids activities that children can play a number of ways. They can work on long vowel sounds, short vowel sounds or a mixture of both. We focused on long vowel sounds when we explored this activity

These game could be played inside or out. Kids activities that can be played both places give you the option of playing this game in various learning and playing spaces.

Supplies Needed for the Kids Activities

Large plastic container
Construction paper to create a skull and crossbones
Heavy duty glue stick
Toy gold coins
Permanent marker (black)
Container for coins

Creating the Kids Activities Container and Coins

I hand drew the skull and cross bones for the outside of the large plastic container. You could easily print out a coloring page with the skull and cross bones and have your kids color it. When they are colored in, you could glue the picture to the container.

The gold coins we used came from a party store. On each gold coin I wrote one of the letters that is a vowel. It was a challenge to write the letters on the bumpy surface of the coins. Some letters came out much clearer than others.

How to Play Gold Coin Vowel Sound Drop

We took the coins and coin drop container out into the back yard. JDaniel was encouraged to stand straight and tall and try dropping the coin in the container after telling me a word that had the vowel sound featured on the coin. (He started to drop the coin from a lower height after having a few coins barely miss the container.)

I encouraged him to stand up straighter and hold the coin up at about waist height. He found that the coin ended up going into the coin drop container more easily when he wasn’t bent over. It was also a whole lot more rewarding.

It was actually harder to get the coin in the container then it was to come up with long vowel word to match the letter on the coin.

You will find more outdoor activities on my Outdoor Fun for Kids Pinterest board.

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{Read.Explore.Learn} The Pirate of Kindergarten Activities

August 30, 2013 By Deirdre

The Pirate of Kindergarten (Richard Jackson Books (Atheneum Hardcover)) is about a little girl just starting kindergarten named Ginny. Ginny loves books and she loves the reading circle. When she tries to get to the reading circle, she runs into real chairs while trying to avoid the unreal ones. When she tries to read, she sees double words and pictures.

Activities Based on the Kindergarten Pirate

It is at the beginning of they year eye exam at school that her double vision is finally uncovered. Ginny didn’t realize everyone didn’t see things double. Her parents didn’t know she saw them this way either. They do take her to the eye doctor. He prescribes glasses, some exercises , and an eye patch.

Jinny loved the patch it made it so she didn’t have to squint. Back at school Ginny became the Kindergarten Pirate who could do work, cut bunnies out without three ears, and read.

I bet there are a lot of children that have vision issues that aren’t picked up until they start school. Ginny seemed to enjoy some of the benefits of hers. She loved seeing letters, numbers and pictures double.

What did we do to explore this book?

Sight Word Eye Charts

I made JDaniel some sight word eye charts. I set them up to look like the eye charts that doctors have. They have words spread across several lines and the lines are numbered. The words get smaller as you go down the chart. JDaniel had to cover one eye like the Pirate of Kindergarten.

One eye chart at a time was hung on our kitchen door for JDaniel to work on. I would call out a line and he would read me the words.

Here is a PDF for the Preschool Sight Word Eye Charts. (These charts have been updated)

What Do You See? Folder

Activities Based on the Pirate of Kindergarten

This What Do You See? The folder has extra large holes cut into it. It was designed for young children working on visual discrimination. For older children would benefit from a folder with smaller cut outs like the ones in the cat folder I made to explore the book Midnight: The Halloween Cat.

If you can’t find large pictures in magazines, you can mount smaller pictures on a piece of construction paper.

Double Vision Math Activity

Jinny had double vision so, I made JDaniel a game that worked on addition facts with doubles. He has a work mat with areas to put manipulatives in. The is a space to place the dice he rolls on the lines under that glasses. A third die can be used to display the answer to the math fact.

I put out wooden blocks to count with. They ended up being a little large. Next time we play the game I will put out a smaller manipulative. We also put these sheets into a plastic sleeve so we could use them over and over again.

I have decided to ask you to link your posts to the Read.Explore.Learn. Facebook page instead of running a link up. I hope you will stop by and share your children’s book related activities there.

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