Pirate Letter Hunt and Egg Carton Pirate Ship

Monkey J loves his letters and we often do letter searches like this one:

Because I haven't had the word "pirate" spelled out as much around the house I normally do during theme weeks, I left the word front and center on the wall and then placed letters, including the ones needed to spell "pirate" in random order:

It took Monkey J no time at all to find the correct letters to spell pirate!

We then placed the letters on a blue poster board and I let him decorate it with some fun stickers:

This is typically a project I would do during the beginning of our theme week to introduce the theme and help with word recognition, but we've been a bit thrown off this week with our beach trip coming up on Saturday.

We also squeezed in a craft.  You will need:

• Brown paint
• Egg Carton
• Scissors
• White paper
• Toothpicks
• Markers

You will first paint the egg carton brown.  You can do single egg cartons for smaller ships, which I did for Monkey A, but Monkey J wanted a bigger ship:

I then made flags using toothpicks and white paper.  Monkey J directed me with which color stripes he wanted the flags to be.  You then simply poke the toothpick flags into the carton:

And you've got yourself a pirate ship!

Ooops, just missing the Captain ;)

Pirate Handprint Place-Mat

We made some fun pirate hand-prints today:

Painting the thumb and lower palm red, the center palm white, and the fingers brown, our handprint looked like this:

After letting dry, I used a black Sharpie to draw lines across the red "hat" and drew an eye, eyepatch, and a mouth:

Together with Monkey J we came up with pirate words.  I then covered the papers in clear contact paper so that we can use them as place-mats when we go to the beach on Saturday.

So much fun!

Pirate Math: Counting and Number Recognition

This morning Monkey J had some fun with pirate math:

I lined up his pirates with some coins underneath them.  He had to count how many coins each pirate had:

And then match the pirates with the numbers I had placed on the counter.  I included a bunch of numbers to make it a bit more difficult:

It was a fun time and we spoke like pirates the entire time!  When we were done with the exercise, Monkey J placed all of the coins in the treasure chest.  He took them one at a time from each pirate and would subtract one coin each time, saying, "3 coins, minus 1, leaves this pirate with 2 coins".  An impromptu subtraction lesson!

Pirate Week: Digging for Treasure

Monkey J ran outside super excited when I told him we were going to dig for treasure!

I took our gold coins, our flags, some shells, and some pirates and put them in our makeshift sandbox:

I left some coins on top and buried a whole bunch...

Collecting his booty:

While Monkey J counted his coins:

Monkey A collected all of the pirate flags:

And would then stick them back in the sand; a great fine motor skill practice:

An easy set-up for a fun-filled afternoon!  P.S.  I am just not a fan of sandboxes.  Maybe a real sandbox would be less work, but I find them to be so messy and then you have to cover them because of animals and/or if it rains.  Seems like a lot of trouble!  What are your thoughts on sandboxes?

Pirate Week: Sensory Bin

Ahoy me mateys!  And shiver me timbers!  It's pirate week!

As always, I start the week off with a sensory bin.  I think it's a great way to introduce the theme to our monkeys:

I had ordered these pirates, coins, and pirate flags through amazon.com:

And I admit I had a fun time setting up the bin :)  For the base, I used cloud dust.  Cloud dust is super easy to make:  4 cups flour, 1/2 cup baby oil...for this bin, I ended up using about 12 cups flour!

Here was the set-up for the monkeys:  I also bought the pirate hats, treasure chests, and treasure maps online.  If you are interested in a particular product, please let me know and I'll happily send you the link!

Monkey J immediately grabbed a treasure map and we played treasure hunt all morning long.  We would alternate who hid the treasure and we would give each other clues to find the treasure.  This was a great language practice for Monkey J who at first gave me clues of "It's in my room" and gradually evolved to "the treasure is hidden in the place where you put your water at night" :)

Meanwhile Monkey A proved there is absolutely no wrong way to play with a sensory bin:

Stay tuned for more of our Pirate Week fun!

Carbon Dioxide Red Balloon!

Today we had our good friend come over to our house.  She used to watch Monkey J back when I was still working part-time and they have a very special bond to this day!  She came over with some fun science experiments and one was perfect for red week since Monkey J chose a red balloon!  

You will need:

-Baking Soda
-Vinegar
-Balloons
-An empty water or soda bottle
-Funnel

Pour some vinegar into the empty water bottle and then funnel some baking soda into a deflated balloon:

Place the opening of the balloon completely covering the water bottle and slowly lift the balloon allowing the baking soda to mix with the vinegar:

Which in turn causes the chemical reaction between baking soda and vinegar to occur which yields Carbon Dioxide:

It is really neat to explain to the differences between solid, liquid, and gas.  Thank you Lauren for such a fun science experiment!

For those interested (I sure was!) here's the chemical reaction:

NaHCO3 (aq) + CH3COOH (aq) ----> CO2 (g) + H2O (l) + CH3COONa (aq)

No Bake Playdough

Over the weekend we brought out our homemade playdough only to find that our red playdough had dried out (we made it almost 2 years ago -wow!)  Monkey J wanted some red playdough for red week, so we did a quick no-bake option.  You need:

1/4 cup salt

1 cup of flour:

And 1/4 cup water (you may need to adjust the water in order to get the right consistency):

Stir it all together (Note: it helps to mix the two ingredients first and then add the water.  Monkey J was a bit too excited and mixed the water with the salt.  It works, but it was harder to stir)

After some stirring, start kneading it with your hands:

Add some food coloring for color:

Work the color through the dough:

Add more food coloring if necessary or add some Kool-aid like we did for some delicious smelling playdough!

Of course Monkey J wanted to make a snake right away :)

Note:  This no-bake playdough is a one-time use, but the simplicity of it along with the kids being able to make it essentially all by themselves means it's an activity we'll repeat!