My knowledge of Blackbeard primarily comes from a live action Disney movie from the 1960s. I watched Blackbeard’s Ghost more times than I can count as a kid, and one of my favorite Christmas presents Jeff gave me when we were first married was a DVD of Blackbeard’s Ghost. As I searched for North Carolina books I found a book about Blackbeard, so of course, I made a pirate lesson for our geography lesson that week. This was a slight mistake.
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Blackbeard’s Last Fight
We read Blackbeard’s Last Fight when we first studied North Carolina, and the kids were a little weirded out by it then because it’s a little scary, but they’re older now, and a bit more bloodthirsty, and besides our geography group skews heavily to the boy side of things, so anything with pirates is good.
When I read it 3 of the boys (including mine) were absolutely spellbound and kept creeping closer and closer to me, so they were almost on top by the time I was done reading it.
At first, I didn’t have a great idea for a craft, and then as we did the protest signs for “Freedom on the Menu,” it came to me! Blackbeard’s corpse sinking into the waters, yes that was our craft.
Looking back, future Ticia 2020 is not quite sure what I was thinking. Truly, I’d rather watch Blackbeard’s Ghost knowing full well there is not a bit of history in the movie.
Adding in a bit more pirate history to this pirate lesson
Future Ticia 2022 here, since we were specifically studying Blackbeard in North Carolina, we didn’t look as much at the history around piracy. So, here are a couple of books and a couple of videos you can watch.
I got started on this and realized I just need to flat-out make a pirates booklist. My library has over 100 pirates books alone (as I’m putting it together I’m throwing out any of the common kid problem with the word pirate in the title, I’m at 20 books already…).
And two good history channels to give you a bit of information:
First Overly Sarcastic Productions:
And the It’s History channel is awesome.
I hit update and totally forgot to add in a great video on Blackbeard.
Blackbeard pirate craft
So, I got out small Dixie cups, popsicle sticks, and cut index cards into little bitty pieces to fit into the cups (approximately fourths). Then I set the kids to draw their Blackbeard, when they were done they glued their card to a popsicle stick and we stuck it through the bottom of the cup.
Side note, I’ve added into the subscriber page (join my newsletter) a pirate you can print out, as well as a minibook if you have older kids to join.
They happily sat there pulling him up and down in the cup, and watching his body drown….. Yes, they loved this craft. It’s truly rather morbid.
Afterward, Superman had a blast stacking cups and making pyramids.
All in all a very popular lesson with the kids.
Let’s look at some more geography or history lessons
- Singapore Unit Study
- Candlemaking lesson
- Nathan Hale history lesson
- American Revolution movie
- Switzerland Unit
My little boys would love that too! Its so funny to me how those things, like a pirate drowning, is so entertaining for them. Mine are in the superhero phase so we have lots of doom & gloom around here that ultimately ends in laughter. Boys. lol!
Anyway, I'm stopping in because I am new to We Teach and just joined the “We're Bloggers” group. When you find a moment, I would love for you to do the same. You can find me at https://sofiasideas.com/
Sofia's Ideas
BTW, I didn't see a GFC widget so I am subscribing via Google Reader. I hope that will suffice?
I don't think I could handle that craft, but I'm sure they loved it!
I'm impressed with Superman's pyramids.
We have a point here called “Blackbeard's point”… I am guessing there are a lot of them. My kids want to do the cup stacking. I keep forgetting that. Thanks for reminding me. Thanks for sharing this with us.
This is definitely a boy craft, but clearly Princess had no problems with it either – this is what she gets for growing up with two big brothers!
I can't see the pictures right now, but the crafts sounds perfect. My boys would love this book I am sure- thanks for sharing!
Great craft idea. This reminds me I've been wanting to do cup stacking with Selena.
Sort of like the groundhog craft only more piratey – clever!
Thanks for letting me know, I was able to become your official GFC friend today! lol ;0
I've always had issues with my widget too so you are not alone. I always want to get rid of it but readers like it so there it shall stay.