Program (Child/Tween) - The Daring Club for Girls (Pirates)

Some time last year I was Googling ideas for library programs and came across a library that offered a program called "The Daring Club for Girls". Not much information was given on their website specifically about this program other than that it was a club based on the book The Daring Book for Girls by Andrea Buchanan. I borrowed almost - if not all - the books in the series via ILL, and found them so useful that I wound up buying three of them. This summer I did a 5-week program with each one being inspired by a theme in the books. The program was advertised for ages 6-12 and encouraged daring boys to join us as well.

Week 3 - Pirates

Program Put Simply:

1. Play:

~ Land and Sea

2. Make:

~ DYO Swords
~ CYO Treasure Chest

3. Watch:
~ Treasure Planet

4. Other:
~ Interview a Pirate

Detailed Program:

This program also took longer than I expected. I bought a pirate hat from Party City and dressed up in a coat and boots (I tried for an eye patch but I just couldn't get it to look right) to try to look as piratey as I could for my "interview" (an explanation of how the pirate interview work can be found on this page). I was pleasantly surprised with how entertained the kids seemed to be by this activity. Afterwards, the kids got to design their own sword from Oriental Trading as well as their own treasure chest (basically these except they were all white) - looking back on it I probably should have got them some dollar store trinkets to use as "treasure". Once a majority of the kids were done with the crafts, we played a couple games of Land and Sea while we waited for everyone else to finish. I first heard about Land and Sea when I was volunteering at church, when all of the kids thought I was the crazy one for having never heard of the game; however, since then I have yet to find any children who know what the game is. The "official" rules to the game can be found here, however I changed them a bit. I started out by making a large square out of masking tape on the floor. Inside the square was "land", outside the square was "sea". When everyone left seemed to have the concept perfected I added "sland", where one of their feet needed to be on the inside and one on the outside of the square. After a couple of games we ended the program by watching a scene from Treasure Planet.