Kitchen Floor Crafts: Pirate Treasure Sensory Bin & Letter Map Match

It's no secret that we love all things pirate around here, so when we saw the chance to join in on the "International Talk Like a Pirate Day" Quirky Blog Hop we couldn't resist. International Talk Like a Pirate Day is actually coming up on September 19th, but today Witty Hoots is hosting this Quirky Blog Hop so bloggers can share lots of fantastic pirate fun to start getting everyone in the mood!

For our pirate activity, we decided to explore the world of pirates with a little bit of letter learning thrown in too! To make the learning as hands on as possible, we put all the materials into a sensory bin.

Pirate themed learning is always fun, and you'll notice at the bottom of this post several other pirate learning posts we've shared before.

To begin with I used several of the same materials I used for our Leprechaun's Letters: An Alphabet Sensory Tub bin.

Materials:
Cardboard Letters, spray painted gold
Plastic gold coins (I found these at the Dollar Store)
Gold plastic necklaces
Plastic gems (These are from the Fish/Aquarium Department at Wal-Mart)
Large bag of rice (for the main filler of the bin)

I also created a "Pirate Map" using a large piece of brown craft paper and permanent markers. I made quick sketches to make it look like a map. Onto the map I wrote each letter of the alphabet once in red permanent marker. I placed the letters all over the map, and not in alphabetical order.

Pirates Play & Learn

The boys were instantly intrigued with the bin before I could even finish setting it up, and when I rolled out the map they were even more excited. I quickly explained how they could search through the treasure bin to find all the letters they needed for the map.

For this activity, I decided to match capital letters to capital letters as I knew that would be a good match for Little Brother and his current understanding of the alphabet. However, you could also set up the map so kiddos needed to match capital letters to lower case letters.

The boys took turns pulling letters out of the bin and matching them to the map. Big Brother has known all his letters for quite a while now, but he still enjoyed playing with all of the materials. For Little Brother, this was the perfect blend of fun and learning.

The boys also started to find places to collect the treasure that was inside the bin onto the map. Big Brother, like a true pirate, especially enjoyed collecting as much as possible for himself.

When the boys had matched all the letters the first time, they put the materials back in the bin and enjoyed just playing with the materials in the bin.