Our students earned a party a few months ago for filling our classroom bucket. They voted on having a Pirate Party, so we decided to make a week of it. We wanted to wait for the weather to get nicer so we could go for a treasure hunt outside, and we also wanted to make it a week-long celebration since they were so excited about it.

My teaching partner and I found some great resources online to help with our centers, and we had so much fun playing and learning. Make sure you read until the end to get a free printable to practice ‘AR’ words! Here are just some of the things that we did:

1. Pirate Map Fine Motor

At our fine motor center, students could use the different gems and rocks to make a path to the treasure on the work mats.

It’s such a fun way to work on their fine motor skills, and they loved being able to use the different treasure items. I found this map here (I’m not sure if this is the original, please let me know if it isn’t so I can fix it!)

2. Sensory Bin

Another center that we had out all week was our sensory bin. We used black beans as the base, and added a whole bunch of pirate treasure that students could play with. Our students loved playing with it this week.

3. Coding Pirate Treasure Maps

We did some computer-less coding this week with these great activity mats. Our students made their own treasure maps, then had to code their way to the treasure.

We have been practicing block coding on the computers, so this center was perfect for reinforcing their coding skills. I got this activity from Umbrella Tree Cafe.

4. Ten Frames

I added our ten frames and gold coins to our light table to bring some math into our pirate fun. This was just an easy invitation to set up, and this helped to reinforce ten frames.

5. Block Center

My teaching partner added pirate items to our block center and our students had so much fun building their own treasure chests and pirate ships. These two looked like they are ready for an adventure!

6. ‘AR’ Words

We of course had to learn all about the ‘AR’ sound, and our students made a list with all the words they could think of that have ‘AR’ in them. We did this as a whole group exercise first so that they could get the hang of it. Thank you to The Inspired Apple for this idea (I could not find a link that worked for this picture).

After we finished our chart, our students had the chance to make their own list. We challenged them to write as many words as they could, and they did a great job and wrote words that I hadn’t even thought of!

If you would like to use this activity with your students, I have added it to my Resource Library as a free download!

I didn’t have a chance to take pictures on our actual party day since it was so busy, but here are a few things we did:

made pirate hats

made pirate flags

‘Would you want to be a pirate?’ writing prompt

made their own treasure maps, then soaked them in tea

had a treasure hunt with clues, and ate freezies!

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