Pirate Day! Preschool Activities and Learning

There's a sliiight chance that I'm having more fun planning these activities than the girls are having doing them, but it's definitely up for debate! I love finding just the right activities/printables to go with each day. I'm seriously lacking in the creativity department myself, so am utterly thankful for all the crafty and imaginative parents out there who share their secrets!

For the printables for Pirate Day, I specifically looked for Jake & The Neverland Pirates printables, since that show is what got my daughter interested in Pirates to begin with. The Disney site has some cute pages.

As does the awesome mom at the 1 Plus 1 Plus 1 Equals 1 blog. Her pack is geared towards kindergarten aged children, but I was still able to use several of the pages for my 4-year-old.

We started off the day with my daughter doing some of the activities in the printables, while I prepped for the days activities. We then sat together and had her cut out the pirate patch and bird from the Disney/Neverland Pirate pack. It also helped her establish her pirate name, which was either Big Lani The Kindhearted or Sneaky Lani The Sneaky Snook, depending on whose crew she wanted to join!

After we got her set up with that, we made a pirate hook hand, using tin foil, duct tape, and a solo cup. First I jabbed a thick hole in the bottom of the cup, and covered around the hole with duct tape. I then made a hook out of wadded up tin foil, and put the end of the hook through the solo cup, which I then taped down with criss-crossed duct tape. I've seen some on-line where the cup was painted black, but my kids (and their lazy mom) preferred the red cup, so we went with it!


She already had a compass, a periscope, and a magnifying glass in her playroom, so we gathered all those items and set off for our pirate treasure hunt around our home. Apparently it's super easy to make an authentic looking pirate map. That is, if you budget more than 20 minutes to do it. I poured some tea on a crumped piece of paper, then set it outside to dry - it just came back soggy and dirty looking. Ah well, authenticity is overrated:


Since my handwriting resembles chicken scratch, this is how it went: We left the Great Ship ________ (insert last name) and headed out past the Mysterious Mushroom Patch, and around Baby Butterfly Tree (which consisted of several butterfly hair clips on various points of the tree, and gold bangles underneath and in the branches - treasure!!) We then went around the house to Walk The Plank - a 2x4 I set up behind the driveway. If they were older, I would have set it up on some bricks, but this was about all my almost-2-year-old could handle. They then had to pass the Gate of Riddles - our back gate, where I asked a "riddle".

Why are pirates called pirates? They just arrrrrrrrgh!

If that one makes you cringe, here are more (that will most likely do the same).
Past the gate, we waded through Crystal Waters (i.e. our pool) then around the back of the house to the Fairies Hideaway, where X marked the spot. Along the way, treasure (i.e. more jewelry) was to be found at the various spots. Fairies Hideaway was a bush with a gap in the middle, where I hung bead necklaces
 and glittery scarves, and the treasure was a green bowl full of pirate coins I had snagged from Party City:


The treasure was guarded by fairies from the Safari Ltd Fairies Toob (which were new, and by far the hit of the day!) Afterwards, in an unplanned act of piracy, my daughters threw all the gold coins and jewelry in the pool. Skip that activity.

We ended Pirate Day with an appropriately piratey snack inside, goldfish crackers and orange slices with pirate sails. I can't find the link for the printables with the pirate sails, but this one has some great party printables.


Other ideas for snacks include Pirate Jewels - fruit on a stick or one of the cocktail picks that look like swords, and a tropical smoothie.

I had also planned to set up an aluminum foil river, much like this one, but the heat kept climbing on a hot Florida day, and the treasure hunt was all this hot (not in a good way!) mama could handle! Another website has the river and added waterfalls, which I think would be fantastic for next Pirate Day!

Dinosaur Day! Preschool Learning Activities

We're usually drowning in princesses, so it's a wonderful thing that my 4-year-old has been increasingly interested in dinosaurs. Still, she resisted Dino Day as soon as she heard about it, until I promised a jam-packed day o' fun:

It was easier to find dinosaur-related preschool activities on-line than it had been for our Doc McStuffins Day, so I printed off several types of learning printables. There are a ton of sites that pop up when you search for dinosaur preschool pack, but here are a few I looked at (I pick and choose which pages to download based on my 4-year-old's individual interests, and what she needs to work on):

http://3dinosaurs.com/wordpress/index.php/free-dinosaur-pack/

http://www.2teachingmommies.com/2011/07/roar-for-dinosaurs.html

http://www.1plus1plus1equals1.net/2009/10/dinosaur-tot-pack/

Lani completed those while I prepped for our other activities. My original plan had been a fossil dig in the backyard - I bought a bunch of plastic dinosaurs (I think skeletons would be a little creepy for my little one), but, in the midst of a particularly sweltering hot Florida summer day, couldn't bring myself to try to find enough dirt patches in our yard to dig up and bury them in. In the end, I made a makeshift sandbox from a under-the-bed storage box and a pack of sand I had ordered in anticipation of the real sandbox we may eventually get. The dinos got thrown into the box of sand, and that box was one big hit! They spent a substantial amount of time sifting through the box, squishing their toes in it, trying to pour out the sand, etc., etc. We followed it up with some non-themed time in the sprinkler to wash off all that sand! I had also frozen some dinos in blocks of ice overnight, along with a few other toys, and let them play with "excavating" them from the ice. That got old fast, since my two are not particularly patient!  

Next up was a dinosaur snack that I had gotten the idea for from Pinterest. I think the pinner had named it "Pteradactyl Park", but there was only a photo uploaded, no link for me to give out. Using that as inspiration, I used a piece of styrofoam, covered it with plastic wrap (to keep the "sand" still edible), and laid crushed graham cracker crumbs along the bottom. I then planted wooden skewers of fruit into the styrofoam, and decorated the whole thing with some of the excavated dinosaurs. The girls LOVED it, and ate the fruit faster than I've ever seen them eat fruit before!

Our final activity was a playdough volcano. I told Lani about some of the theories of dinosaur extinction, including an Ice Age and volcanos, but she was waaaay more interested in seeing how the volcano was goin to play out. We didn't have nearly as much playdough as we needed to make the whole volcano (this took place before I discovered how ridiculously easy it is to make large batches of playdough at home), but this was by far the biggest hit of a pretty popular day! This is the site from which I got the instructions:

http://www.create-kids-crafts.com/playdough-volcano.html

Their volcano is *much* prettier than mine, but I'm pretty sure it didn't matter . . . anything that can keep a 4-year-old entertained for over an hour is gold on a tray!

All in all, this day was a huge success. I've tried to have some other themed learning in the meantime, but I've found that when I stretch activities/themes out over a week, the end result isn't as exciting. I think one jam-packed day (maybe two) a week, is best. The rest of the days are filled with splash pads, beach days, and everything else that summer should be about!

Doc McStuffins Day! Preschool Learning Activities

I had such grand plans for the summer - weekly themes, around which I would plan learning activities, trips, crafts, etc. So with almost a month into the summer, I've done 3. Not 3 weeks, 3 days. But good days! The rest of the summer is flying by in a haze of splash pads, beach trips, dance camps, and mama's chores/work.

The first of the three days was centered around Doc McStuffins - I love that new cartoons that come out are so aware of breaking gender stereotypes, and of teaching. For those who don't know Doc McStuffins centers around a little girl who looks out for the healthcare needs of her stuffed animals (and also happens to have a mother who is also a doctor.) My 4-year-old, despite the ongoing princess obsession, has very frequently expressed interest in the medical world, and loves Doc McStuffins. A week-long theme seemed a bit long, so this was a day-long theme. The night before I began, I ran across a Doc McStuffins printable preschool pack! I love the parents who create these and share them with the world! This is from Super Mommy To The Rescue, who was my hero that day:

http://supermommytotherescue.com/free-doc-mcstuffins-preschool-pack

After starting off the day with a few of those activities, we proceeded to set up a triage area in the playroom - several stuffed animals lined up on a diaper changing pad, and all the Fisher-Price medical kits came out, as well as some real gauze (which Lani LOVED) and tape. We talked about some first aid procedures, and then walked through some animal ailments. Even my 22-month-old got into this, giving Boots (from Dora) a full exam! This definitely was the most popular activity of the day.

Afterwards, we watched and danced to The Skeleton Song on YouTube (also a huge hit) and made Skeleton Bones for a snack - just pretzel sticks with mini marshmallows on both ends, dipped in candy coating (although white chocolate probably would have been more delicious.) Honestly though, I think Lani enjoyed making them infinitely more than eating them.

We ended the day with a few more activities from the preschool pack, and then Lani proudly showed off her new doctoring techniques when daddy got home!