Portland, Maine – I don’t know if you’ve been following our weather lately. But like a faithful metronome, we oscillate between windchill 28 below and 46 above. Either it’s unsafe to leave the house or it’s raining so hard that huge chunks of ice floating by also make it tricky to play outside with my munchkin men.
If you need a boredom buster for your house, too. Try this!
We stumbled upon an awesome find at the bookstore, PIRATEOLOGY. My four-year-old is convinced a pirate left it there by mistake. And once you open this book, you’ll wonder, too. It’s filled with letters written in pirate code, envelopes to be opened, a touch-and-feel bag of gold, pieces of treasure map and an encyclopedia’s worth of factoids and lore.
And that inspired us to make a pirate map of our own, complete with burned edges. We cut out a panel of a grocery bag. I burned the edges over the sink. Grocery bags catch fire a little quicker than I anticipated. Needless to say, my kids do not get to help with the fire bit. They can only watch.
Next, we take a wet sponge and dampen the pirate letter to give it a weathered appearance.
Before we draw our map and mark it with the ‘x’, get your matey to hide the treasure. We used an old jewelry box filled with mostly foreign coins.
Now have your pirates draw the map and put the ‘x’ where the treasure is hidden.
Time to hunt for treasure!
This was fun for all of us and a great boredom buster! This is an entertaining way to bring books to life. Want to add other pirate adventures to your day? Check out our blog on building a pirate ship out of cardboard boxes.
Enjoy,
Anna
Preschool Perks and Toddler Take Aways
- Imaginative Play
- Spatial Memory
- Cartography (the art of map making)
- Expressing spatial relationships
- Fine motor control
- Literacy