Pirates
13 Jan 2010 Leave a Comment
in Children, Special times/children Tags: pirates
The kids are crazy about pirates. Dora has the pirate piggies. The Backyardigans have a pirate show. Lazytown has a pirate song. I decided to capitalize on the interest and we studied about Sir Francis Drake, a hero to the English but a pirate in the eyes of the Spanish people. The kids enjoyed it and I even learned a lot. For Davy’s birthday, we had a whole bunch of pirate things found at Dollar Tree.
My husband brought home a couple of pieces of cardboard for me to make fabric-covered bulletin boards. James was immediately convinced that Daddy had brought them home to make him a pirate ship. So he brought home two more pieces of cardboard. I drew a pattern on each big piece with just a little water on each side, boards and black squares for shooting the cannons. I took another piece of cardboard and cut in half. I made joints by making a slit in the side of the pirate ship and cutting the half pieces to make pieces that went into the slit easily but didn’t fall out. So the joint on the half piece is kinda an L-shape. You can see the joints in the first photo. I made two joints for each corner so 8 joints total.
The children made a flag with a large piece of construction paper and hung it with a long strip of cardboard that I had discarded. You can create a lot of fun play things with cardboard. So think of something that would thrill your kids and try to make it. They remember those things, I’m sure, much better than any bought toy.
*Word of warning – My husband brought these pieces from the grocery store that he manages. In some areas where roaches are significant problems, it’s probably not a good idea to bring in too much cardboard. Roaches lay their eggs in cardboard and before long you will have a nasty infestation. I learned this the hard way when I didn’t immediately get rid of cardboard boxes that I used in moving from the Mississippi Coast up to North Mississippi. A good pest exterminator that treated their favorite spaces like the refrigerator and freezer motors took care of the problem in quick fashion. For a long, long time, I wouldn’t keep any cardboard in the house. I can bring it in now because it’s just not as big a problem here since we’re not near big bodies of water like the Gulf of Mexico or the Mississippi river. Just be mindful of your area and be sure to get cardboard from a clean grocery store.
