This week’s theme:
Unsolved Mysteries – The Life of a Pirate
Fact of the day:
Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island in 1881. It is set in the days of sailing ships and pirates and tells of the adventures of Jim Hawkins and his search for the buried treasure of an evil pirate.
Resources list:
Paper, card, pens, glue, toilet roll tube, feathers, string, stick, youtube; Brown paper, teabag, pens; Coins, paper, coloured pencils; White wax crayon, water colour paint; Printer; Bottles, a ball.
Activity 1:
Captain Flint is the name of the parrot in the book. The parrot belongs to Long John Silver and it has travelled all around the world with the pirates. In the book, the parrot is perched on the shoulder of Long John Silver and serves as a means of alerting Jim Hawkins and his friends to the presence of Long John Silver, as Captain Flint constantly squawks, “Pieces of eight!” and other pirate phrases!
Make a parrot companion of your own, like this. Or make a Twirling Parrot by doing this. Or make this parrot bookmark using this template and these instructions. Or download and print a parrot to colour in that can be cut out to perch on your shoulder.
Practice saying ‘Pieces of Eight’ in your best parrot voice! Check out this clever talking parrot!
Activity 2:
Jim Hawkins finds a map in Billy Bones’s sea chest, Jim takes the map to Squire Trelawney and Doctor Livesey who realise that it shows where Captain Flint, an evil and heartless pirate, has buried his stolen treasure.
Make a treasure map of your own, depicting a treasure island filled with paths, landmarks, trees, plants, buildings, mountains or hills, rivers and lakes, sea serpents, some ships, a castle, skull and crossbones and anything else you fancy. You could get fancy and add a compass in the corner. Don’t forget to add an ‘x’ that marks the spot of the treasure. You could use any paper, but brown parchment (or a brown paper grocery bag) looks particularly authentic. You could also scrunch the paper up and rip along the edges to make it look aged; using a tea-bag to stain the map can also add an aged effect.
Your map can look however you want, but there are some ideas for inspiration here, here, here, and here.
You could roll the map into a scroll and tie it with a piece of string for somebody to hide in your house or garden for you to discover!
Activity 3:
Try out some map-reading co-ordinates with this online game. To read co-ordinates you read across, then up. So, (3,2) would be 3 steps across, 2 steps up.
Activity 4:
To make some treasure for a chest (you could make a chest from an egg box, perhaps), using a pencil or coloured pencils, try out some coin rubbings. Once you’ve rubbed a page full of different coins, try matching them with the real coins, like this.
Also, you could cut them out and match up all of the same coins and place them in piles in a treasure chest.
If you’re looking for hidden treasure, you could do your coin rubbings with a white wax crayon and create ‘secret’ money that you could ‘reveal’ by brushing water colors over the rubbings.
A doubloon was a Spanish gold coin often found in pirate’s treasure chest. It was called this as it was a ‘double’, and worth the amount of two. Download and print this Coin Matching Game to find two of everything by matching the doubles, and work on improving your memory of what’s in your pirate’s booty!
Activity 5:
Entertain yourself on your desert island by playing a game of coconut bowling (you can use a normal ball if you don’t have a coconut to hand!!)