Easy Do It Yarrrself Pirate Crafts #StreamTeam

I’m not sure where my little guy found his love of pirates and ships. I don’t remember watching a lot of TV shows or movies about pirates, nor have I read him any pirate books.

I suppose it’s possible that our Tall Ship adventures last summer fostered a love of ‘pirate’ ships, so he payed attention to whatever was on that showed pirate ships.
However this came to pass, I have a little boy who absolutely LOVES pirates. While we were at the cottage this past week with a group of friends, one of the other kids had some temporary tattoos to share – and he was so delighted at receiving a pirate ship tattoo!! (He wouldn’t let me put it on his upper arm – he wanted it on his hand where he could stare at it all. day. long.)

Maybe it’s the adventure. He sure is a sucker for adventures – whether it’s an ‘adventure walk’ around our block, a bike ride by the water to find cattails, or boarding the Toronto Island Ferry. He loves reading about adventures (Franklin the Turtle sure has a lot of adventures! And Sam and Stella also take a surprising amount of adventures!), and especially watching adventures. Diego has always been a favourite and he’s also latched on to A Turtle’s Tale, Rio, Madagascar, and The Hive.
We just returned from a week at the cottage yesterday, and I’m finding that we’re all having a bit of trouble adjusting back to the ‘real’ world. Even though the weather was absolutely gorgeous this morning, I sent them all downstairs for snack time and they watched Rubbadubbers: Tubb’s Pirate Treasure. The Rubbadubbers are a group of bathtub toys who are alive and have adventures- and in this episode, they create a world pirates & treasure in their imaginations. The kids loved it. I heard them laughing out loud several times. While they watched, I got a few things ready for a Pirate Ship craft – as much as they are off their routine, so am I – so doing an activity like this with the kids is a great way to get my head back in the game.

I pinned a whole bunch of different pirate crafts and activities last night – we’re definitely going to go back to some of them, especially the exploding treasure chests!

We made a 3-D Pirate Ship on a wavy ocean.
Materials Needed:

1 sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 thick white paper per person
white and light blue crayons
blue paint + water
paint brushes
fork
brown paper
1 paper straw per person
scrap paper for sails & flags
White glue

How to do it:

Cut out some basic shapes for the craft before sitting down with the kids – 1 boat shape for each out of the brown paper, and 1 large and 1 small (or more, if you want!) sails for each boat, as well as a couple triangles for flags. Cut each paper straw into 1/3 and 2/3 pieces.
Colour some wavy lines on the white paper with the light coloured crayons.
Water down the blue paint a bit and paint the entire paper. Some of the wax lines should show through the paint.
Drag the fork along the paint (gently, so as to keep from ripping the paper) in a wavy fashion to create more waves.
Hang the paper to dry outside for a couple minutes.
Glue onto the sea the ship and the masts (the paper straws!). Put some glue on each side of the large sail and affix the sides to the sea over the taller mast, making sure that the sail sticks up a bit in the middle. Do the same with the small sail on the smaller mast.
Add the flag to the top of the mast(s).
Voila!

More Pirate Adventures to come, I’m sure! Are your little ones adventurers? What kind of adventures did they get up to this summer?

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Jenn vanOosten

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and love my city. I'm a Netflixer, choral music geek, bookworm, inventor of recipes (I take Artistic Licence on EVERYTHING that I make), wife of one, mother of two, and owner of a neurotic Schnauzer. I respect people who respect others. I love good food that's well done, but my favourite lunch is KD & hotdogs. With ketchup. I'm addicted to Clearance Shopping. I will ALWAYS get the product that I want at the price that I want, eventually.