Family Storytime: Pirates

A pirate storytime is always a fun theme, but I find it harder to find shorter books for storytime audiences. There are a few short favorites I can count on so I always end up having enough books. 

It seems it's also more difficult to come up with activities to do with this one, but again, I use my favorites and have a good time. 

The shorter books I can count on and used were The Pirate Who Said Please by Timothy Knapman, Bubble Bath Pirates by Jarrett J. Krosoczka, and Pirate Pickle and the White Balloon by Ann Burg. I liked how the first book teaches manners and the others use imagination. 

 We learned colors using the Pirate Bear flannel and the group had to each put their pirate patch colors on him once I sang out the color. "Pirate wore his red patch, red patch, red patch, Pirate wore his red patch out one day."

I wanted to do something different for our next pirate activity and I was able to use some gold coins I had for a sensory bin for another program and we counted our treasure coins. I found very helpful printable counting mats online and I'll be laminating and adding Velcro to our coins to add to our felt collection.  

Our craft was making our own pirate flags. I liked how this craft used the kids' imaginations because they could decorate it any way they liked, but I added a ship die-cut to give it a more pirate look and help the kids get their ideas started. They also had the option of cutting out their pirate flag and making it look jagged using scissors.

Other Books...but longer:
Pirasaurs! by Josh Funk
Shiver Me Letters: A Pirate ABC by June Sobel
Are You the Pirate Captain? by Gareth P. Jones 
Don't Mention Pirates by Sarah McConnell
Pirate Treasure by Scoular Anderson

Other Activities:
Row, Row, Row Your Boat song

Ahoy, mateys!