Pirate party: Activities

After Luke’s pirate crew picked up their new names, it was time to look the part!

We had all manner of pirate garb… bandanas, eye patches, face paints, tattoos, and two kinds of hats. Plus a basket of one-piece pirate suits to fit the 4 and under kids.

With all those cutie-pirates and Erik’s photo-zeal, of course we had to set up a station for Pirate Polaroids.

Most of the crew posed for a group shot.  They were supposed to be saying “Argggh” here, but it looks like Luke’s saying, “¡Arriba!”

For the first half of the party the kids moved between the costume and photo booths and a few other stations.

There was Treasure Dough, with gold coins and other play-doh accessories at a table,

A plank for walking,

Which we made by just setting some heavy old pieces of wood on garden pavers.

And the playroom offered Literary Pirates, a pirate/ocean themed book basket, as well as Ship Painting.

There, the kids used watercolors to paint paper sails that we threaded onto kebab skewers and stuck in jiffy pots filled with soil and grass seed. Here’s hoping they sprout!

Then we played Pin the Parrot on the Pirate and awarded prizes.

After refreshments, came another pirate standby: the treasure hunt! To keep it simple, the ‘clues’ used a little pirate lingo to state the next location rather than describing it. Because even that can be a little mystifying at four years old.

The kids loved racing to each location,

And searching for the next white card.

It surprised us how much looking it took to find rather plainly hidden items…

But at long last the treasure chest was found and opened. The box revealed… pirate swords! I hope no parents hated me for these. I must admit that they were Luke and Eleanor’s first swords, so we tried to use them for a non-violent purpose. The parents blew bubbles for the kids to pop with the swords. It took some vigilance to make sure no one got poked by mistake, but in the end the kids did a great job taking those bubbles down without any collateral damage. We got so many amazing photos of the bubble-popping, but this one was our favorite. Can you handle the intensity!?!

And that concluded our party activities! It seemed to work well to avoid competitive games (except for pin the parrot) and stick with more self-guided, cooperative activities for this age group. I think the crowd favorites were the temporary pirate tattoos, scavenger hunt, and bubble-popping!

Just one party post left now… rub-a-dub-dub, pirate grub!