1-2-3 Come Do Some Pirate Activities With Me

I've had several requests for some pirate-themed activities, so I thought I'd putz with designing some that would help reinforce upper and lowercase letters. 

Did you ever decide to do something that you thought would take a few hours and all of a sudden you whiled away so much more time?

That's what happened with the Polly Wants A Letter Cracker packet.   It's three days later, and I'm finally done working on it!

Here's how to use the packet:  Print off  Polly's body parts, trim, glue them together and then laminate.

Cut out her mouth, to make a nice opening for your kiddos to "feed" her letter "crackers". 

I perched Polly on a very small wastebasket that I bought at The Dollar Store, so that when students "feed" her, the crackers will drop into the basket.

Print, laminate and trim the upper and lowercase letter "cracker" cards.  Pass them out to your students. 

So that you'll have more than enough food for Polly, I designed two different sets of uppercase letter crackers, plus two sets of lowercase ones. 

These could also be used for Memory Match, or "I Have; Who Has?" games.  There's a tip list of other ideas in the packet as well, including a Kaboom game.

You can call for the "crackers" in alphabetical order, sing the ABC song, or read a pirate alphabet book. Whatever letter you come to, have those students feed Polly the upper and lowercase letter crackers. 

For even more review, the packet has a variety of pirate-themed upper AND lowercase alphabet worksheets, like "I Spy a lowercase letter" game.

After students have practiced, you can assess their knowledge. 

I've included a variety of alphabet assessment activities, such as the "Spy some letters" assessment mat. 

 A nice activity for your Daily 5, is the Polly Wants A Letter Cracker ABC booklet, where students color, trace and write the letters. 

Have older students write a word that begins with that letter.  To make this more of a challenge, have them use a pirate word or phrase.

To help you with this, I spent several days reading a few pirate books and lots of pirate articles about the history of pirates, real pirates, places they went, their treasure and adventures etc.  This helped me to compile an alphabetical list of pirate words and phrases. 

With the aid of lots of "Talk like a pirate" sites, as well as nautical jargon dictionaries, and all of the above resources, I came up with 794 words and phrases related to pirates, and included this list in the packet.  

I really enjoyed learning a lot of new pirate vocabulary and trivia, that's now buzzing in my head with some future ideas... 

While doing that research, I came across several wonderful pirate alphabet books, perfect to read before and/or after feeding Polly. 

Shiver Me Letters  by June Sobel, Pirate's Alphabet  by Patti Wigington, A Is For Arrr!  by Laura Purdie Salas, Twenty-six Pirates by Dave Horowitz, An A to Z of Pirates by Caroline Stills and Pirates of the Alphabet by Tim Whitney, are all worth taking a peek at.  A cute trailer for the Pirates of the Alphabet is also on YouTube.

If you're into Aps you may also like Pirate Phonics: Blackbeard's Alphabet.  It's $1.99  There are also a plethora of pirate songs and short pirate video clips on YouTube.

Thanks for visiting today.  Feel free to PIN away.

"A merry life and a short one, shall be my motto." -Bartholomew "Black Bart" Roberts

1-2-3 Come Seuss With Me!

Anyone else out there "ob-seussed" with the works of Dr. Seuss?  I enjoyed some of his books as a child, but when I really appreciated his prolific writing, was when I became a teacher.  I could see first hand that his goofy pictures, silly words and rhyming technique caused giggles and helped my students learn how to read. 

His birthday is March 2nd. This year he'd be 110 and many will celebrate with a Cat in the Hat Day or by simply reading Seuss books through out the month. 

With over 60 titles to choose from, you could read a different one each day  as you join with others to "Read Across America."

To help you celebrate, I designed a few activities to put in centers or play games with, as a way to review a variety of standards.

The number puzzle strips have been downloaded quite a bit, so I thought it would be fun to make a few with a Seuss theme. 

Thanks to the wonderful graphics by myclipartstore.com they turned out adorable.  The puzzles help your kiddos practice counting to 10, count backwards from 10 to 1, as well as skip count by 10's to 100.  Click on the link to view/download the 14 Dr. Seuss puzzles.

Another cute way to practice skip counting by 10's is to have your students make Thing 1 and Thing 2.  Add 10 turquoise hair strips that they've "curled" on a crayon (5 on each Thing) and then count them by 10's.  

Click on the link to view/download the Count by 10's With Thing 1 and Thing 2 "craftivity".  

Many teachers have told me that they collect my different alphabet cards, so that they can switch things up a bit each month to keep their students' interest. 

In the Dr. Seuss alphabet packet   you'll find Thing 1 and Thing 2  ABC cards that show both upper and lowercase letters on the same card, as well as separate upper and lowercase letter cards, so that you can play all sorts of games like Memory Match or "I Have; Who Has?" 

Use them as flashcards, a border, cut them up into puzzles etc.  I've provided a 3-page tip list of all sorts of things you can do with them, as well as Kaboom cards to make games even more fun.  Click on the link to view/download the Dr. Seuss Alphabet Cards.

Finally, I also made some number cards from 0 to 120.  There are math symbol cards as well, so that students can make and solve equations, plus an odd and even sorting mat and a tip list of ideas.  Click on the link to view/download the Dr. Seuss Number Cards.

That's it for today.  I hope you can stop by again tomorrow for the newest Seuss FREEBIES.  In the meantime, scroll down to see other blog articles and ideas, or click on the link to pop on over to the Dr.Seuss section of TeachWithMe to find even more.

 "Don't cry that it's over; smile because it happened." -Dr. Seuss