Talk Like a Pirate Day was a success. There weren’t many (any?) people at my school who knew about it, so I was doing a lot of explaining.
I saw a lesson plan idea that had kids take a nursery rhyme and re-write it using pirate language. It was writing day in Literature Class, so that’s exactly what we did. I handed out a small glossary of pirate terms, then gave the kids a sheet of nursery rhymes they could use for the assignment. When they were done, if they wanted, they could share their writing, but they had to use their best pirate voice.
There were some good re-writes. Of course the kids thought it was hilarious that treasure is called booty and that there is such a thing as a poop deck. What they didn’t suspect is that they were writing creatively and experimenting with dialect. Ehhhxcelent!
I write the date on the board each day.
I can’t resist sharing… Beth’s kids’ school had Dress Like a Pirate Day yesterday. HERE is a picture of them she sent me. Awesome! I love it!
Glad your activities went so well – isn’t it neat when kids learn stuff sort of through the back door (or should I say “porthole”?)
Those costumes are outstanding, Tara and Tim. I mean, who’d want to go back to land lubber living after looking the “paarrrrrrrrt” so well?
Sadly, I only now can think of ideas to spice up yesterday’s Retreat Day with pirate-y things, and what are the chances next year’s retreat will fall this late in the month again? An opportunity
missedscuttled. Sigh.Ahoy! Yer date-writin’ put a stitch in me side laughin’, and younder wee ones look mighty good in their finery.
Great idea with the nursery rhymes! You know this will have to be a repeat activity next year, right? I found myself talking in a (terrible) Scottish accent much more than a pirate-y one. Those poor preschoolers – they have a terrible role model.
It’s horribly confusing to read your post and think that I’m reading Lauren’s post. I thought that having preschoolers rewrite nursery rhymns was pretty advanced and my kids were VERY delayed for not being able to handle that kind of work. 😉
I thought about doing something like that in 3rd grade, but couldn’t find an appropriate pirate dictionary. Did you come up with the glossary yourself or did you use a resource?
Here’s the one I used:
http://www.wikihow.com/Sample/Pirate-Dictionary
I edited it a little. I removed some entries and changed some other ones.
Aargh, Mateys!
I’m especially proud that those costumes were fashioned out of $7 of thrift store purchases, things we had on hand…and a wicked pair of scissors! So blasted fun!