This week has been my favorite so far this summer. It was a huge hit,especially with the boys!
We started off our time by gathering the children in the reading area. This is where we set up the back story for the scavenger hunt that we took a little bit later.
This is my side-kick Pirate Taco! As you may have guessed her favorite food is Tacos. We told the children that the night before our pirate ship had run out of tacos, not even a crumb was leftover. We took a journey to Taco Bell, where we met two mean pirates named, Harry and Larry. Harry and Larry took our treasure and ran away. We were unable to chase them because we were wearing roller skates. Oh the luck! We cried a bit over our luck and then transitioned to a book.
We read:
by Danna Smith
With the older children we read a different book.
We read:
by Jim Kraft
For the next activity we had the children create an eye patch. They colored tiny pictures of pirates, parrots,or a treasure to glue to their eye patch.
I excused myself out of the room to grab the message-in-a-bottle that we had set outside the classroom earlier. The bottle had a CD with our first clue, as well as a written note saying to, "Listen to This."
Here I am goofing around by listening to the bottle. Most of the classes caught on that we should listen to the CD and not the bottle.
Here is a video with the audio clues that sent us around the school.We placed Cds of the clues around the school and took along a portable radio to listen to them. When I do this again next year, I think I will make the voice a little less scary. A few of the younger children were a bit frightened. (Yes, I am a 32 year old woman! You might not figure that out from the audio)
The hunt took us about 15 minutes and ended with finding the treasure at the front desk. The directors were extremely helpful in playing along with our theme. We have the best directors around!
Back to the classroom we went with the treasure chest. One of our extremely talented teachers made it for me last summer. Inside the chest we had shark shaped gummy snacks, play gold, and a book! Books are always treasure of course! Everyone received some gummy snacks and a piece of pirate gold!
The books inside the treasure chest was Port Side Pirate by Oscar Seaworthy and Debbie Harter.
The book comes along with a delightful CD that sings the story! Be warned! The song will get stuck in your head. You will find yourself singing it at random moments during the rest of the day!
We ended our time by singing the "Baby Shark" song.
This video is pretty similar to the song we sing. We don't have the whole losing a leg and a head thing. The person swims faster and faster and makes it to shore.
Next week, we have Mini Olympics for the Preschool and Ooey-Gooey Olympics for the School-Age summer campers! It should be a fun and messy week!
