Ahoy Mates! Pirates at Work and Play !

Our week began with a great snack.  What do pirates eat when they are on their ship?  Fish, of course.  We went "fishing" today with pretzel rod poles, cream cheese or honey as the bait and raisins as the fish.  Fine motor workout, a bit of sequential thinking and best of all, a healthy and delicious snack.

More delicious fishing

On Monday for drama, Mr. Jamie told the children about a King who didn't like to eat or take a bath. Lukas, Anna, Sophia, and Sammie were the king's wizards.

Max was the king . James David and Jonah are the cooks. They tried very hard to please the king. All three boys did a good job of recalling the right words to play their parts!

Jack, Charlie, and Matthew were the king's soldiers.

Laura was the queen. At this point in the play she joined the wizards, cooks and soldiers. They all  wanted to help the king solve his problems. The children enjoy drama as they all have an opportunity to role play. Role playing is very good for the children as it helps  their self esteem as well as building their oral language skills.!

The sensory table is now filled with sand, gems, gold coins and treasure chests to keep our pirates busy and thinking.  Scooping the sand is fun all by itself, but when we add challenges such as put 3 gems and 2 coins in the chest and tell us how many items you have all together, we can incorporate math too.

Everyone has  a family picture hanging from the wheel over the sensory table.  David's watching Anna  string the decorative beads.

Thanks to Sophia for bringing in a very big pumpkin.  Hammering nails into the yellow gourd and the pumpkin is terrific for improving eye/hand coordination. 

Max is painting  his pirate shirt for our bulletin  board display.
Each child chose 2 colors for an AB pattern.  Since there was no visual model the children had to concentrate to be sure they were using the correct color to complete the pattern.  Painting left to right across the shirt encouraged multiple crossings of the body's mid line, an important developmental step for writing.

Laura's completing her pirate's face.  The children drew the face and the eye patch freehand.  Making the face big enough for features and the eye patch in proportion to the face was an important part of this lesson.

Sophia came dressed as a pirate one day, much to the delight of our resident pirate expert,  James David.

Charlie W.'s pirate, complete with earring,  is ready to be hung up.

Lukas brought a terrific show and share, a play mobile pirate!

We added new numerals to the wikki stick wall.  Matthew is gaining upper body strength and stability by pressing hard enough to keep those wikki sticks on the wall.

Thank you to Jonah's  mom and grandmother.  Smoothies made right in front of our eyes were the perfect addition to the waffles we had for snack.

The big pirate ship needed a name.  Each child picked 2  squares and wrote a letter on each.  Then we had to put the squares in order.  This activity provided the kids with practice in recognizing and writing lower case letters.

Connie is James David's special friend and how lucky we were when she spent the time before Shabbat in our room.  The kids loved building pirate ships with her!

The end to a busy week....thank you to Sophia, Robin and David.  Sophia brought a treasure chest filled with "pirate gold" which just happened to be gold $1 coins for each child to place in the Tzedakah whirler.  All Tzedakah collected this week and next goes towards purchasing books for Temple's adopted elementary school in DISD.  If you haven't sent in tzedakah specifically for this project please do so.  Your child will enjoy getting to see their coins twirl around and your change truly makes a difference!