Pirate Ship Handprint

Summer school is winding down, and so is our Pirate theme. I will be sad to see the Pirate go. My students were not all that interested in elaborate pretend play. If they did engage in it last year, it was usually with lots of prompting, and limited story lines. Towards the end of the year our almost kindergartners started to pretend to be Pirates while on the playground. I decided to spend this summer with our Pirate theme in the hopes that this play would continue. Unfortunately, our almost kinders decided to do Kindergarten Prep summer programs, and left us :( (I am SO excited that they progressed enough to enter general ed, but sad to see them go!). Needless to say, I was worried the Pirate theme would fall flat without the big kids modeling. Boy was I wrong! I was amazed at how quickly they took to the idea of Pirates. We put a large cardboard box in the pretend play area, and I figured I would have to paint it and do a lot of coaching before my kids would see it as a Pirate Ship. Again, boy was I wrong! They saw the "boat" and knew just what to do! I hope these skills continue into the fall!

Today we made Pirate Ship Hand prints as a sensory project. Some of my students are very uncomfortable with messy textures and so we try to expose them to safe activities to desensitize them to these textures. Hand print art is a great way to do this, and the parents always enjoy it too.

Of course if a child has a very intense reaction to having his/her hand near the paint he/she is not forced into touching it. We try to have them become okay with simply having the paint near them, and then we will build on this over time. One of my students was very unhappy about the paint, and so we simply traced his hand with a brown crayon.

What you'll do:

• This is a 2 day process. On the first day cut a white piece of paper into two "hot dog" pieces
• Day 1: Give the children a variety of "ocean" colors and "sunset" water color paints. (we used liquid watercolors and a variety of brush sizes). Have the children paint one of the papers in the ocean colors and the other in the sun.
• Let the papers dry over night and then glue the strips together.
• Day 2: Pour brown paint into a paper plate and place students hand in.
• Have the children open their hand wide (you may need to model this)
• Press down.
• Glue sails on the middle fingers

If I were to do this again, I would replace one of the "sails" with a pirate flag, but even without it the kids understood that it was a Pirate Ship or boat.