Back to School/ Pirate Week

Hey y'all,

We took some time off for the summer and now we are back!!!

I have been all over the place this school year with extra school stuff popping up everywhere so I have not been able to post yet, but that does not mean that I have not been coming up with fun things to do with my kids in the classroom.  This summer I discovered a calendar of crazy (but real) national and international holidays and I thought I would create some theme weeks that would go along with those days.  Sorry, a few of these themes are past the date that you could attach them to if you want to do things by the calendar, so you can just do them as theme units or wait until next year to attach them to the actual dates they are related to.

We will start with Pirate Week which will attach to September 19th (National Speak Like a Pirate Day).

First off, I went to Target and got hats, eye patches, and swords in the party section for the kids to wear throughout the week.  We took pictures just for fun and I thought I would show y'all how great they turned out, but of course, HIPPA says no faces, so I found a cute pirate face cake that I could use to cover up the faces of the pictures.  Now I wish I would have found that cake earlier because it is SUPER CUTE!!!  Here is the link to it if you want to make your kids some cake: Pirate Cake

Ok, now on to the good stuff.  A lot of the activities I gathered from different blogs, websites, and Teacherspayteachers.com but I will give you links to everything so that you have all of the information in one place.  I also lesson planned a few pirate books (because that is my favorite way to do language therapy).   

Articulation/Voice/Fluency:

Jenna over at Speech Room News posted several fun pirate activities and games last year on her blog.  I used her Capture the Jolly Roger game to work on using good speech strategies while reading the fun pirate sayings.  Here is a link to her website so you can see how she set it up.  Capture the Jolly Roger

I tweaked the game just a little to provide more opportunities for talking and you can use them as a vocabulary game too if you wanted to.  Instead of just writing the pirate phrase on the Popsicle stick, I wrote what it means on the back of the stick in a different color.  This way you can work on determining the meaning of the phrases by putting them in sentences, and the kids can find out if they are right by looking at the back of the stick.  I also found cute pirate boxes in the dollar spot at Target this summer and bought two so my kids could keep their team's symbols in the boxes.  Jenna used wooden pieces for her team symbols, but I just used pictures from the internet.  I laminated them and then attached them to colored Popsicle sticks to make two teams.  The blue team had to capture all of the green teams symbols and the green team had to capture the blue team's symbols.  The first team to capture them all, wins!!!

My school gave out iPads to use in the classrooms this year so I finally have an iPad to use in speech!!! (The villagers rejoice!!)  I have been trying to find ways to implement the iPad and remembered a Preschool Pirates post Jenna wrote at Speech Room News.  In the post, she listed several iPad games that are pirate related.  (As well as several pirate activities that looked really cute for younger students)  I downloaded a few of her iPad game ideas, but the one I chose to use was Blackbeard's Chest Memory Game.  I had the kids drill their words and then take a turn when they were done.  The loved it.  It has several levels, so the kids can keep going if they are extremely good memory players.

Go to the Preschool Pirates post for more information or get the iPad game.

Language/Social Skills:

I found a bunch of different activities you could do for language kids based on level or age.  Here are a few ideas and where I found them.

Pirate Themed Preposition Book:
I am always working on prepositions with at least one of my kids.  I found this cute pirate themed preposition book at Teachers Pay Teachers for FREE!!! (Thank you Sped-Ventures) Just print if off, laminate, add Velcro, and you are good to go.

I Have, Who Has:
Another great Teachers Pay Teachers free game is an I Have, Who Has Pirate Synonyms game.  (Thank you Vintage Teacher) It is great for kids who are working on synonyms.  I used folders to cover the bottom words on the cards (the "who has" words) so that the kids did not get too confused on what word they were looking for.

School Treasure Hunt:
 I found a scavenger hunt on-line (and I can't remember where I got it so I can't post it, but there are a bunch on-line for you to pick from) to use with my kids.  I have an intern this semester so we split the kids into two groups and took pictures around school of them with what they found to fulfill the scavenger hunt clues.  This was great because I could focus on descriptive words, categories, pretty much anything that you want to language wise, and social skills.  We talked about how there is not one right answer to the clues and worked on compromising when trying to find what to take pictures of.
Here are a few examples of things on my hunt:
1) Find something that is small and blue
2) Find something you can wear in the summer
3) Find something that is sweet

Blackbeard, Bluebeard, and Redbeard:
I found a short video on youtube that is was perfect for my younger kids instead of reading a book. (If you can't get access to youtube at school, it is on teachertube as well)  It was a story song about three pirates, Blackbeard, Bluebeard, and Redbeard, who wanted to paint their ship.  They could not decide what color to paint it, so they each started painting it the color they wanted.  The ship was never seen again because it was maroon (you know marooned on an island?).  Cute right?  I have a few kids that are working on sequencing using first, next, and last; answering wh?s about a story, and naming things from oral description.  I made some Boardmaker symbols for them to use when sequencing what colors the pirates wanted to paint the boat in order.  I also made symbols to go along with the following comprehension questions:
1)What were the pirates looking for? (treasure)
2)What did the pirates find? (socks)
3)Who wanted to the paint the boat blue, red, black? (Bluebeard, Redbeard, Blackbeard)
4)What color did the boat end up being? (maroon)
5)Where did the boat end up? (an island)
6)What did Bluebeard want to paint blue? (the sails)
7)What did Redbeard want to paint red? (the canons)
8)What did Blackbeard want to paint black? (the ship from top to bottom and front to back)
9)Who has an eye patch? (Redbeard)
10)Who has a hook? (Bluebeard)
11)Who has a peg leg? (Blackbeard)

If you have time, you can also have the older kids watch the video and ask them what marooned means.  They can use their context clues from the video to find out.

Here are the Boardmaker symbols I made for you to use if you want to.

Finally...Book Units:

How I Became a Pirate and Pirates Don't Change Diapers by Melinda Long and David Shannon are two cute books that are great for figurative language and making inferences.  I would read through the books and ask questions along the way.

Here are a list of questions that go with each book:
How I Became a Pirate:
1)How did Jeremy Jacob know it was a pirate ship?  What are other symbols for/associated with pirates?
2)What does slathering mean?
3)What does "shiver me timbers" mean?
4)What did the pirates think about the sandcastle Jeremy Jacob built?
5)What is a sea chantey?
6)Why do pirates sleep with one eye open?
7)How does Jeremy Jacob feel about not getting a bedtime story?
8)What caused Jeremy Jacob to not want to be a pirate forever?
9)What emotions does Jeremy Jacob feel during the storm?
10)Why does Jeremy Jacob think that they won't need the map again?
11)How does Jeremy Jacob feel about his pirate adventure?

Pirates Don't Change Diapers:
1) Who came to visit Jeremy Jacob?
2)How are the pirates mistaken about what baby sitting is?
3)How did they run out of diapers?
4)Hoes does everyone know Bonney Anne is hungry?
5)Why are the pirates all dirty?
6)What kinds of "rock" did each person mean? Jeremy Jacob? The pirates?
7)What does "quicker than you can say 'scurvy dog'" mean?
8) What does marooned mean?
9)What does "we stopped so fast we were almost pirate pancakes" mean?
10)Why does Jeremy Jacob know where to dig?

Compare and Contrast:
You can create a Venn diagram to compare and contrast Jeremy Jacob's life with his pirate life (after reading How I Became a Pirate). There are tons of ways to contrast the ways of life, but it will be difficult to find similarities.  My kids came up with some (they both play soccer, both have adults, and both have digging) to get you started.

You could also compare and contrast the two books since Pirates Don't Change Diapers is the sequel to How I Became a Pirate.

Story Map and Retell:
We used a story map to map out the second book and then transition words to retell the story.  I have a picture of the story map I use on another post if you need an example. 

Pirate's Booty:
The last thing I did with my kids for pirate week was send home permission slips for the kids to have Pirate's Booty.  We talked about how the pirate word for treasure is booty and how the snack looks like gold nuggets. Enjoy!!

Here is a copy of the Permission Slip for you to use.