Pirates -- School-age

Pirates

School-age theme Pirates

Coins

Design your own pirate coins. Coins, Site To See- -- Pieces of Eight and Doubloons

Jolly Roger

Design Your Own Jolly Roger

Ships use different flags to signal other ships and identifying themselves. The "Jolly Roger" flag was flown to identify a pirate ship about to attack.

Jolly Roger

Need: 1 piece of drawing paper, 1 sheet of red, white, or black construction paper, 3 pieces of felt ( red, white, black), a stick.

Design a pirate flag that tells something about you. Pick something you are interested in or good at to include on your pirate flag. For example: if you like the guitar include guitars on your pirate flag instead of crossbows. Also include on your flag pirate symbols: skulls, skeletons, crossbones, cutlasses, hourglasses. First draw your design on the drawing paper. Then cut your design out of felt and glue onto construction paper. After your pirates flag is dry tape it to a stick.

Compass

Make A Compass

Need: 1 clear plastic cup, pencil, bar magnet, thread, needle or small nail, cork, water.

Note: Review with the children compass directions.

Stroke one end of the magnet along the needle, about 30 times in the same direction. Test to see if the needle (or nail) has become magnetized by picking up pin. Cup Compass: Tie one end of a piece of thread to the center of your magnetized needle. Tie the other end of the thread to a pence. Place the pencil on the rim of the cup with the needle hanging down into the cup. Place the completed compass on a table.

Once the needle comes to rest the thickest end of the needle will point north. Move the cup compass to other areas on the table and watch the needle come to rest and point north. Cork & Cup Compass: After magnetizing the needle (or nail) press the needle through a length of cork until the cork is centered on the needle. Fill the plastic up with water. Place the cork with needle in the cup of water. As the needle floats and the comes to rest the thickest end of the needle will point north.

Compass Guide Poem color page

Compass Rose

A compass rose is a figure on a chart, compass, or map that shows the directions. Most show the cardinal directions: North, South, East, and West.

Have children make their own compass roses, being sure to put the N, E, S, and W in the correct places. Start with a circle. Use a ruler to draw lines to add cardinal direction points. The standard abbreviations are: N=North, S=South, E=East, W=West.

Compass Guide Poem.
Draw a compass rose.

Compass Rose color page.

Poems

Compass Guide Poem
Printable version in above 'Compass' section

How do we know
Which way to go?
Look at the magnet
and it will show.

North, south, east or west,
For finding directions it is the best.

How does it work?
It’s as simple as can be.
The planet’s biggest magnet is itself, you see.

The biggest, and strongest magnet of all.
Compared to it, all others are quite small.

Because of its size, its pull is so strong
that all other magnets are pulled along.
Try as they might, for all that they’re worth,
Magnets can’t help but point toward north.

So the next time you’re lost
without a clue,
Let a magnet find your way
to rescue you.

Pirate Story
By Robert Louis Stevenson

Print the poem. After reading the poem have the children draw an illustration for the poem.

Sites to See

Images of compass roses from Portuguese Nautical Charts - Every nautical chart maker had his own characteristic compass rose using different color oppositions. View a few early sixteenth-century examples.

Charting A Course With A Compass - Chart a course with a compass rose. Learn about the Portuguese map-maker Pedro Reinell who first drew the now standard 32 point compass rose on a chart (compass drawn on a chart is called a compass rose).

Azimuths and compass quadrant bearings (thinking in circles) - Follow along as a compass rose is created.

Treasure

Make A Treasure Chest

Need: You need a shoe box,colored paper(black, brown, yellow), glue, scissors

Print decorations for your treasure chest: skull and crossbones, keyhole, and keep out sign.

Have the shoe box, glue, and paper ready. Paste brown paper on the box. Cut tiny strips (1/2 inch) of the yellow paper and glue them on the edges or as strips on the box. Cut black about an inch and glue as strips on your box. You can also glue brown or black construction paper on the inside of the box. Make a keyhole than you are done. Contributed by: Liz Houston

Make A Treasure Map

Need: white construction paper, crayons, used damp tea bag

Have children draw an island on their construction paper. Write the name of the water that surrounds their island (ocean, bay, cove, lake) on the map. Draw a compass rose in the lower right hand corner of the treasure map.

Things to include on the island: symbols for hills, mountains, pond, lakes, forest, palm trees, shark fins in the water, big X to mark where the treasure is.

When the treasure maps are finished age the maps by pressing a damp tea bag all over it. Tear jagged edges all round the treasure map.

Pirate Seek And Find 10 Coins

Story Video

Read

Stories to Read-Online

Peter and Wendy

Pirate's Treasure

Bunny and the Pirates

Famous Pirates

Francis Drake
Pirate-turned-explorer who was the second man to circumnavigate the globe.

Edward " Blackbeard" Teach

Vocabulary

Pirates, Ahoy Spyglass

Need: brown construction paper; yellow construction paper...

Making spyglasses--Glue strip of yellow paper on bottom of horizontal brown paper...roll and staple into a tube. Have students look thru spyglass; therapist/teacher holds up picture symbols of pirate words and asks the pirate 'what do you spy?' encourage student to respond with the carrier phrase "I spy ______". Contributed by: KJ

The Pirate Cards
ESL Flash cards that teach numbers, adjectives and 'with'.

The New England Pirate Museum Vocabulary Hunt

Pirate Vocabulary
Print "Pirate Vocabulary" and create a Pirates Dictionary.