Talk Like a Pirate Day

Talk Like a Pirate Day is officially on September 19th but I am celebrating it a week early at my library. I have scoured the usual internet sites to get ideas and inspiration.  At first I was all gung ho and wanted to do it like a story time with an opening song/activity/craft/song/activity BUT after I ran the idea by my supervisor she gently reminded me that the way we are celebrating it (as part of our Super Saturday series) will be more free-flowing. I decided to set up the meeting room at my library like this with the squares representing one section of the room:


                                                              
       Cannonball sea battle                                            Pin the patch on the pirate




       
Display of pirate themed materials Captain Hook




                                                       
Craft station Refreshments





I chose that mix of activities because I have noticed that the majority of patrons that attend these events tends to be families with young (<10) children and there is always a sprinkling of unaccompanied minors as well. For those older siblings there are word searches, coloring sheets galore and a craft.

This worked: I noticed some older kids coloring and making the pirate mask that I got on Oriental Trading. I would say that was definitely one of the more popular items. I observed that some of the gaming crew kids and even a few tweens were excited about the Captain Hook station. Basically they put the hook on their hand and had to see how many pretzels they could hook in 30 secs. I think the competitive aspect of this is what got to them. The record was 14 by the way.

Here are the other stations:

For future Talk Like a Pirate Days I will do the following things:  1. Buy more punch. I only bought two containers and they ran out quickly.

2. Make the hooks out of a different material. The foil was very aesthetically pleasing but they bent very easily.

3. Enlist more volunteer help. I ended up manning the hook pretzel station and while I had fun I would have been much better served roaming around and helping out at other stations where needed.

4. Put less materials on display. I ended up putting a second display table between the refreshment table and the craft station and hardly anything was touched.

All in all though the day went very well and major fun was had by all!