Back to School!

Wow! We are off and running in a new school year. "Aargh you ready for 3rd grade?" my new pirate unit was a great success. The kids loved it. We took pictures on the first day of school of each student in a pirate hat, an ear ring, an eye patch and a hook for a hand. Our librarian was so excited about my pirate theme that she asked to have her picture taken dressed up too! Our principal came by and we have a great picture of him dressed as a pirate (could be good blackmail material for later...insert evil laugh here!). Our librarian told me that September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. I had a great idea of what we could do with our pictures! We printed them out and sent one home to parents on the first day of school. We kept a second and after reading several "Pirate Pete" books including "Pirate Pete's Talk Like a Pirate" we brainstormed some pirate phrases. Then my students chose one phrase and wrote it in a speech bubble and we posted them on the bulletin board with their picture. We wrote our first stories for the year and posted them on the red paper. I found all kinds of pirate math money worksheets in my files that we used the first couple of days in addition to our Saxon math series. I even found an old abc order pirate worksheet for us to do the first day of school. The only thing I couldn't get in time was the movie "Muppet Treasure Island". I tried our local video store, but they had just "gotten rid of it" and the town library had sold their copy at their yearly sale. So I got online and ordered it from good old Walmart for $5. I will definitely use it next year. I found several ideas on pinterest.com for pirates. That site is awesome!