Kindergarten: Holding Hands and Sticking Together: Pirate Literacy Gold & LOTS of FREEBIES!

We had so much fun reading Shiver Me Letters that I knew we needed something fun to go with it. Last weekend, Jeff and I went searching for "gold." We found it here. You have to have "elementary teacher eyes" to see gold in some places.

My gold mine!

My sweet Jeff carrying the future gold to the car. :)

Oh, I almost forgot. You must get a pizza for dinner, so that you can use the box for spray painting. Right? Yes.

Before...

After!

I wrote letters on both sides of the smaller ~~stones.~~ gold.

The bigger gold nuggets were for the sight words.

Ta da! New center! The children love playing with this at free choice time. They don't realize how many times I hear them reading words and making little sentences. They just think it is fun. ;) I still have a few children working on letter recognition and sounds, so this will be something different for us to use for that, too.

I made a simple recording sheet so that I can use this as a small group literacy center. The children find and write ten words from the pirate's treasure. Then, they each read their ten words to a friend. If you would like a copy of my recording sheet, click on the picture below.

OR if you are feeling clever, I found this idea from The Fickle Pickle. It would be fun to have the kids dig for the gold words!

I found some fun freebies to use with my gold at TPT, too!

Amanda Plum has a cute Shiver Me Letters ABC Activity FREE at her TPT store.

Melissa Freshwater has these cute Shiver Me Letters Alphabet Cards.

Here are some of my favorite pirate books to use for my pirate unit. It is fun to have these books around the treasure center for the children to pick up, read, and study the pictures. The illustrations are wonderful.

(I never read this book, but my daughter did a summer reading program last year in Niagara Falls at all the libraries in the area, and said that this was one of the children's favorites!)

If you want to make your pirate theme to be extra delicious, here are some great pirate food ideas! Some are really simple and would be a great little snack. I actually found a Pirate Party Food Linky Party site at Top Party Ideas. I KNOW! :)

Cool Ideas BlogSpot had some fun pirate activities- AND this idea that shows that any time a pirate flag is added to a fun food- a pirate snack is born! So cute.

Here are some of the games they suggested. I thought the Shark Attack game would be fun using sight words written on papers as the safe land!

Walk the plank

Set up a plank or balancing beam for the pirates to walk along. Use pillows or gym mats to break the fall. Award prizes for the pirates who make it across.

Shark attack

Place 7 pieces of newspaper in the backyard to represent dry land. The guests walk around the newspaper until “shark attack” is called, at which point the pirates run to the safety of the newspaper island. As each round progresses the newspaper is removed and then torn into smaller pieces until only one pirate remains. In the final rounds, pirates can hold onto each other and are still ‘in', as long at least one foot is on the newspaper, and no other parts are touching the ground.

Pin the patch on the pirate

Create a pirate face or use a “Pirates of the Caribbean” poster to pin on the missing patch.

Here are some more fabulous piarate freebies from TPT!

Melissa also shared a great Pirate Adventure Freebie math and literacy activity!

AND she shared her Pirate I Have, Who Has Sightword Game! Thank you, Melissa!

JK Curriculum Connection has a free Pirate Game. The cards are blank so you can use them any way you want. I like this because I am going to make lots of specific cards for my kids who need extra help with certain numbers and letters for RTI. They can match the letter with the "gold."

Look at Fredia Shumway's AWESOME Pirate Themed Wordwall Words! Oh the fun I can have with these! This will be perfect for matching the word on the treasure chest to the word on the gold.

Laura Sosa also shared her cute Pirate First Grade Sight Words.

Emily Ames shared a fun Short Vowel Pirate Game.

Reading-PIRATE Short Vowel Board Game Freebie (blends phonics)

Sped Ventures has a cute Pirate Themed Positional Words and Phrases Book.

Pirate-Themed Interactive Book: Positional Words and Phrases

Look at these cute Pirate Punctuation Marks from Mrs. Seymour's Superstars! It's always fun to review punctuation marks a different way.

Ready for some math freebies? Here you go!

My friend Susanna just shared this fabulous song with me. So- it looks like I am going to turn my "extra gold" into a math center. I still have some children who need work recognizing numbers 10-20 (a couple even 5-10!) and everyone can use some fun addition and subtraction problem gold nuggets, right?

While I was finding that one, I found this silly Jack Hartman song. They will love this one, too...

Or... how about talking like a pirate!

Sid the Science song has a fun little measuring Pirate song.

How about these wonderful Pirate Story Math Problems from The Very Busy Kindergarten. Some are money themed, some are not. These would be fun with a pirate unit!

$Pirate Math Story Problems$ $Pirate Math Story Problems$ $Pirate Math Story Problems$

A Special Kind of Class has these Pirate Math Work Station Activities with gold to cut out and use as counters. You could also use the spray painted rock "gold" as counters!

$Pirate Math Work Stations - Aligned to Common Core - Freebie$ $Pirate Math Work Stations - Aligned to Common Core - Freebie$ $Pirate Math Work Stations - Aligned to Common Core - Freebie$ $Pirate Math Work Stations - Aligned to Common Core - Freebie$

Jennifer Oyler shared her Pirate Themed Number Posters , numbers 1-30. You could fill up ten frames with gold nuggets, too!

Number Posters 1-30 Pirate Theme (with names and ten frames)

Anna Watson made a cute activity called Pirate Math Using Addends 0-10. My kids would love the number cards to practice number recognition or as a matching game, too.

Look at Jessica Miller's cute Parrot Roll and Cover Game. These are always great for a math center. might have the kids count gold nuggets to match the number for something different first. Then, they could play the Roll and Cover Game.