International Talk Like A Pirate Day – A guest blog by Ian Goldsworthy
- Laura Hutchinson Posted On Sep 14, 2018 | Seasonal Fun
Ian Goldsworthy is here to help Learning Resources celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day! Ian is a Year 2 teacher at Manor Lodge School in Shenley, Hertfordshire and he also does teacher training in Science for Essex Teacher Training.
If you’re anything like me (late 30’s, balding, social life not as full as it once was) you’ll have had the 19th September circled in your diary for a long time – International Talk Like a Pirate Day!Yes, it’s time to batten down the hatches, hoist the main sail, and fly the Jolly Roger once again as otherwise sane people pepper their vocabulary with a boat load of ahoy, aha and avast.The salty seadogs at Learning Resources asked me to don my captain’s hat and take a look at three of their fantastic products to make sure they were ship shape ahead of this year’s talk like a pirate day and to think of a few ideas for how each product could be used to aid learning.
Jolly Roger's Pirate PiecesThis is a great game for 2-4 players to begin to recognise fractions, specifically halves, quarters and thirds. The pirate loot is gathered in the centre of the board and players take it in turns to use the spinner to determine which piece of treasure they will be able to take from the centre pile: ½ a gem stone, a 1/3 of a gold medallion, a ¼ of a treasure map or a whole golden chalice?The winner is the first person to fill up their treasure chest, helpfully indicated by empty shapes split into halves, thirds and quarters. But, crucially, there is not enough treasure for all four players; there will need to be some skulduggery in order for any pirate to complete their haul. Once all the treasure has been collected from the middle you can then steal treasure from the other buccaneers, robbing them of their whole fractions whilst adding to your own.Opportunities for learning
Play MoneyNo pirate plunder is complete without some sterling, and this set of UK coins and notes has everything you would need to introduce working with money. The coins are exact replicas of all current UK coins from 1p up to £2 – they’re even a little bit chunkier than the real thing to make handling a little more straightforward. Also included are a set of notes from £5-£50. Everything you might need to set up a role play area or to start working with money more in depth.Opportunities for learning
Playbrix Pirate AdventureA pirate is not really a pirate unless they have a tall ship upon which to sail the seven seas and this fantastic resource allows them to build just that. The set comprises of a number of different cardboard bricks: some shaped in squares and rectangles; some in triangles and pyramids. This range of building materials allows any budding Blackbeards to create a ship, a fort or anything they want as part of their pirate universe. Thanks to some clever reinforcement in the construction of the bricks they are all impressively durable as well.Opportunities for learning
If you’re anything like me (late 30’s, balding, social life not as full as it once was) you’ll have had the 19th September circled in your diary for a long time – International Talk Like a Pirate Day!Yes, it’s time to batten down the hatches, hoist the main sail, and fly the Jolly Roger once again as otherwise sane people pepper their vocabulary with a boat load of ahoy, aha and avast.The salty seadogs at Learning Resources asked me to don my captain’s hat and take a look at three of their fantastic products to make sure they were ship shape ahead of this year’s talk like a pirate day and to think of a few ideas for how each product could be used to aid learning.Jolly Roger's Pirate PiecesThis is a great game for 2-4 players to begin to recognise fractions, specifically halves, quarters and thirds. The pirate loot is gathered in the centre of the board and players take it in turns to use the spinner to determine which piece of treasure they will be able to take from the centre pile: ½ a gem stone, a 1/3 of a gold medallion, a ¼ of a treasure map or a whole golden chalice?The winner is the first person to fill up their treasure chest, helpfully indicated by empty shapes split into halves, thirds and quarters. But, crucially, there is not enough treasure for all four players; there will need to be some skulduggery in order for any pirate to complete their haul. Once all the treasure has been collected from the middle you can then steal treasure from the other buccaneers, robbing them of their whole fractions whilst adding to your own.Opportunities for learning- The strong, clear visuals of the game really help reinforce the differences in the fractions and how many parts make a respective whole. If a player has ¼ of their treasure map, ask them what fraction they have still left to find (3/4).
- Collect more parts than can fit on your whole to demonstrate improper fractions i.e if you collect four parts of a medallion this would be 4/3
- For more advanced players you could use decimal or percentage equivalents, encouraging children to recognise that ½ = 50% = 0.5
- recognise, find and name a half as one of two equal parts of an object, shape or quantity
- recognise, find and name a quarter as one of four equal parts of an object, shape or quantity
- recognise, find, name and write fractions 1/3, ¼, 2/4 and 3/4 of a length, shape, set of objects or quantity.
- recognise and write decimal equivalents to ¼, ½ and ¾
Play MoneyNo pirate plunder is complete without some sterling, and this set of UK coins and notes has everything you would need to introduce working with money. The coins are exact replicas of all current UK coins from 1p up to £2 – they’re even a little bit chunkier than the real thing to make handling a little more straightforward. Also included are a set of notes from £5-£50. Everything you might need to set up a role play area or to start working with money more in depth.Opportunities for learning- Thanks to the fantastic accuracy of the coins and notes, this set makes a fantastic introduction to recognising the different shapes, sizes and values of the coins and notes.
- Asking children to find all the different ways they could make a certain amount with the money they have is a great investigation and really gets them to start to see that there is more than one way to reach an answer.
- Understanding the relationship between the notes and the coins can sometimes be tricky so working out how many of the different coins would be needed to make a £10 note can help children understand both money and place value (10 x £1.00 = £10, 100 x £0.10 = £10 etc)
- recognise and know the value of different denominations of coins and notes
- recognise and use symbols for pounds (£) and pence (p); combine amounts to make a particular value
- find different combinations of coins that equal the same amounts of money
- use place value, known and derived facts to multiply and divide mentally
Playbrix Pirate AdventureA pirate is not really a pirate unless they have a tall ship upon which to sail the seven seas and this fantastic resource allows them to build just that. The set comprises of a number of different cardboard bricks: some shaped in squares and rectangles; some in triangles and pyramids. This range of building materials allows any budding Blackbeards to create a ship, a fort or anything they want as part of their pirate universe. Thanks to some clever reinforcement in the construction of the bricks they are all impressively durable as well.Opportunities for learning- This set is a natural fit for any Early Years roleplay area and, though it comes with a number of decorations to help give it that pirate look, the bricks themselves could be reused for any number of different scenarios.
- The variety in the types of bricks also makes this a great opportunity to introduce the properties of 3D shapes to the children by introducing them to cuboids, prisms and pyramids.
- Don’t miss an opportunity to use this set with older children. The set comes flat packed with the shapes having to be assembled from nets. Whilst the assembly would be too tricky for younger children, children in Years 5 or 6 should find a great challenge in predicting what shape will be made from each net before justifying their reasoning.
- recognise and name common 2-D and 3-D shapes
- identify and describe the properties of 3-D shapes, including the number of edges, vertices and faces
- recognise, describe and build simple 3-D shapes, including making nets
Build It!The Bright Basics™ Slide and Splash Spouts comes with three colourful pipes, two of which are different sizes. Each of the pipes come with suction cups so that you can stick them to the bath. This makes it super easy for kids to slide the pieces around, so that they can build themselves a route.Evie loved becoming a little engineer and had lots of fun designing different routes with the pipes. The idea is to set up a route that allows the 'Itsy Bitsy' spider ball to run through the pipes and the spinning faucet, all the way to the end. You can encourage its movement by pouring water through the pipes using the sun cup.I really enjoyed watching Evie experiment, make predictions and learn all about trial and error with this toy. Just by playing with this toy she’s already building on her early maths and science skills without even realising it!The first time we played with it, we planned and designed a route together. We planned where each pipe would go and then we watched which way the water flowed to try to work out how to get the ball through all of the pipes and if we needed to make changes. Evie found it so tricky at first but seeing her think, experiment and put together the puzzle was a lot of fun to see. This was also amazing for encouraging discussion, developing fine motor skills and for recognising cause and effect. After the first go, Evie wanted to try building several different routes by herself and she did so well.Sense It!Another fun way you can play with this is toy is by playing a ‘Sense It’ game. This particular game is great for very younger kids as you can use the sprinkler cup to pour the water onto your child's hands. They can then try and catch the water. As Evie is older we used both a pipe and the sprinkler cup to pour water onto her hands. I then asked Evie to talk about the differences in feeling, which encouraged a lot of discussion. I also loved using the sprinkler cup to talk to Evie about rain and how the water collects in clouds and then sprinkles down on us. She then used this idea to make it rain down the pipes on the spider ball.Sing It!This encouraged another way to play with the Bright Basics™ Slide & Splash Spouts toy; singing. This is also a game that is encouraged in the toys main activity guide.The Itsy Bitsy Spider ball that comes with the Bright Basics™ Slide & Splash Spouts toy, has been cleverly named after the famous nursery rhyme. During one of our play sessions I started singing the nursery rhyme and as I did I tried to push the ball back up one of the spouts.Evie grinned and instantly took over and role played the song with the Itsy Bitsy Spider ball. She made him climb up the pipe and then when he reached the top, she filled the rain cloud with water. She then used the rain cloud to pour water down the pipes so that it would push the 'Itsy Bitsy' spider ball back out again. Then she picked up the sun cup to 'dry up all the rain' and pushed the spider ball all the way back up to the top again.For smaller children, singing the nursery rhyme will help to encourage their listening skills and language development. It's also such a fun way of learning with this toy.Once you've finished play time, the Bright Basics™ Slide & Splash Spouts can be tidied away into a mesh bag which comes in to the box. This can then be hung to dry when it's not in use. 
Build It!The Bright Basics™ Bath Blocks comes with a large floating base and lots of bricks and accessories that can be stacked and built on top the floating the base. The idea is to make a 
Imaginative Play!The 
Build it!The second way you can play with this toy is by building with it. Using the shape pieces and the construction pieces, your child can you put together a building on your bathtub wall. This gave me the opportunity to discuss shapes a lot more with Evie as she built different structures on our the wall of our bath.Every time she picked up a piece to add to her building, I asked her to tell me what makes each shape unique. For example; a square has four sides the same. I then encouraged her to discuss the difference between a square and rectangle. I loved hearing her thoughts on this.If your child is a bit younger than Evie though, they can simply play with this toy by building different structures, which will help them to develop fine motor skills. You can then use this opportunity to help you to teach your child the name of shapes and to encourage shape recognition.Sing It!The final way we loved playing with this toy is by singing yet another new nursery rhyme. Singing is particularly good, especially for younger kids. This time the Bright Basics™ team encourage you to sing the 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' song. Singing this song helps to reinforce patterns and number recognition and generally makes play time with this bath toy a lot more fun.
Our ThoughtsThank you so much to Learning Resources for sending us these three bath toys to review. My favourite thing about all three of these toys is that they all combine both learning and 
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These cute 
