National Talk Like a Pirate Day

September 19th is National Talk Like a Pirate Day! In honor of this fun and whimsical holiday, your kids may want to spend the whole day talking in a pirate voice, watching pirate movies, or making pirate crafts.

Pretending to be a pirate is a lot of fun, and will give your kids an opportunity to express their creativity.

Pirate Theme Treats.

Realistically, you probably don't want to have your kids eat what pirates actually ate (mostly fish and rum) because they didn't have that great of a diet. When they would call someone a "Scurvy Rascal" it was because they may actually have had scurvy, which is a disease caused by lack of vitamin c. Most fruits and vegetables would go bad on long sea voyages, so the pirates would have had to eat whatever was on hand.

If you love cakes and cookies though, you can decorate some with these pirate inspired ideas above! You could also eat apples, like the dreaded Captain Barbosa craves in the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Pirate Theme Movies.

Depending on the age of your kids, there are plenty of pirate movies to go around! Here are some of our favorites:

• Paw Patrol: Pups Save their Pirated Sea Patroller

• Dora's Pirate Adventure

• Peter Pan

• Tinkerbell: The Pirate Fairy

• Treasure Planet

• Hook

• Pirates of the Caribbean

• The Giant Pear (it features pirates, but only for part of the story)

Any of these movies will be a lot of fun to cap off the night celebrating Talk Like a Pirate Day! You can make some popcorn, and snuggle up on the couch together to enjoy!

Pirate Costume.

Pirate costumes are fairly easy to find, or you can make your own using household items. You can have your kids make an eye patch out of a black piece of construction paper and a string, tie a bandana or scarf around their head or make a paper hat, and use a piece off a coat hanger for a hook like Captain Hook. They can even use make-up to draw on a fake beard!

Build your own Pirate Ship!

If your kids like to play dress up, you can take things one step farther by letting them make their own pirate ship! They can do this using a large cardboard box for the ship. Then, they can paint or color it if they like, and even add some blue waves lapping around the edges. Once that is done, they can make a skull and cross bones flag out of construction paper to hang on their mast, made out of a paper towel roll or something similar.

You could also use a blue blanket laid out on the carpet for them to pretend they are on the sea. If they have little boats for the bathtub, they could have their dolls go around the sea pretending to be pirates looking for treasure.

Pirate Treasure Map.

Kids always love to hunt for treasure, and maps where X marks the spot are good learning tools to help learn about map reading too. If you are feeling creative, you can set up a treasure map for your kids, with some kind of goodies at the end of the map. It is even more fun if you have a sand box and the kids actually get to dig up a treasure.

Local Events.

In our town, there is a Pirate Fest for Talk Like a Pirate Day every year. There are games, shopping, food and fun for the whole family. Perhaps your neighborhood has something like that as well!

If you are local in Colorado you can check out the Northglenn Pirate Fest!

There are good times to be had by all! If your town doesn't have an activity, you could have your own party as well.

Conclusion.

I hope that you all have fun with these Talk Like a Pirate Day activities! Let me know in the comments which ones that you and your kids liked! If you have other ideas and suggestions, let me know what your kids like best too.