The
Funniest Children's
Entertainer in
the West shares his ideas for a successful children's
PIRATE PARTY
Pirate Party
- Pirates Food, Games, Costume, Party Goods Suppliers
Pirate Parties are easy, really easy. It’s just a slight twist on the traditional party, and because the children are engaged with a theme, they’re more interested, so throwing a pirate party is actually easier than an ordinary party.
Children love to play and fantasise, so really all you need is to create a few ideas:
Pirate Costume
and accessories are relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain. A striped tee shirt, a hat or headscarf, a painted moustache, baggy trousers, and a belt, along with a sword or other weapon, a hook maybe, and perhaps a parrot. You can get the whole kit for surprisingly little. We’ve researched the best suppliers and you can find them here.
An eye patch is popular, but do think about it: two dozen excited children charging about with weapons (even if they are plastic), engaging in mock battles and sword fights with their field of vision partly obscured. Maybe best to have eye patches raised some of the time!
Pirate Party Games
Never underestimate a child’s imagination. All you need to do is adapt some traditional party games and let the children do the rest. The advantage of new twists on traditional games is that everyone already knows how to play them.
Captain Says: A straightforward adaptation of Simon Says. An adult, or one of the children, is the leader. The leader tells everyone what to do; Captain says run on the spot, Captain says hands on heads, Captain says swap places with the person next to you, etc. Occasionally the leader misses out ‘Captain says’ – anyone who does the action is out.
Freezin Pirates:
This is musical statues in pirate gear and if you can find some suitable sea shanty style music, so much the better.
Treasure Islands: An adaptation of musical chairs - place mats or sheets of paper on the floor and call them Treasure Islands. Swim in between and splash for an island when the music stops.
Pass the Booty:
with suitable pirate themes is an easy adaptation of pass the parcel
Treasure Hunt:
Simply hide pieces of eight (chocolate coins) around the room hall or garden, or do something more elaborate with clues and a treasure map. Don’t make it too difficult or some children will get bored and drop out.
One Leg Jake: is a short simple game – see who can stand on one leg with hands on hips the longest without overbalancing. Fairly easy – now try with you eyes closed!
Walk the plank: Place a sturdy, but fairly narrow, plank of wood on a couple of bricks to raise it above the floor. Pirates have to walk the plank without overbalancing. Fairly easy, now try it with an eye patch on. Still easy, now with hands behind your back…. A prize for everyone who makes it to the other end.
Captain’s Coming: This is a variation on Captain Says. The room (needs to be a hall) becomes a ship, the front end is bow, the rear stern, port is the left side and the other starboard. The leader shouts locations and the children all have to run to the right place. Now add in other commands: boom coming over – lie down; sharks – freeze; captains coming – stand to attention and salute, man overboard – lie down and swim; man the lifeboats – sit down and row.. Add more variations as you go along cannonball – roll up in a ball etc. Next introduce the rule that after sharks (freeze) everyone stays frozen and all other commands should be ignored until the leader says ‘Captains Coming’. Anyone breaking the rule is out.
And how about a ‘Talk like a pirate’ competition: with a suitable pirate present for the winner? For some reason pirates talk in a broad Somerset accent and say oooooh aaaarrrgh a lot!
And when you’ve done that you can follow it up with a ‘Talk like a Parrot’ competition – maybe the winner gets a bag of birdseed (perhaps nuts would be more appealing)
Pirate Party Grub
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Don’t forget to decorate the table with pirate flags and pirate tableware
- creating an atmosphere makes a big difference. The Pirate Booty link
will take you to the supplier we think is the best.
Food was a problem for all seafarers in the days of sail. The first week after leaving port pirates ate meat, vegetables, cheese and bread. But before long it was mouldy, rotten, and often full of maggots.
Is this the origin of calling food Grub? The only thing that didn’t spoil was hard
tack – a ships biscuit that was probably similar to dog biscuits. Yummm…….
Even the hardiest pirate would get pretty fed up with tack, but you could substitute
Jamaican Ginger Biscuits, Ships Biscuits, Landlubbers Longbread (remarkably similar to shortbread), and presumably pirates had chocolate biscuits for special treats….
You don’t have to do anything very different to create pirate food; it’s all in the presentation, and you can go for disgusting (which children generally love), or romantic: An avocado dip, or green jelly, can be Bogie Dip or a Seaweed Surprise.
So when it’s time to eat, sit the children down and tell them they are going to sample real Pirate Food and tell them what they are getting. They won’t really believe it, but they’ll play along, and if anyone is put off, quietly tell them it’s ‘just pretend’.
Seafarers Sandwiches Tuna or salmon mashed with salad cream sprinkled with chopped lettuce are ‘Squid and Seaweed’, or ‘Octopus’, or ‘Shark Sandwiches’.
Egg mayonnaise is Sea Turtle, or Seagull Eggs, or maybe Albatross Eggs.
Cottage cheese could be gone off sour milk (which it is, but don’t tell the little darlings….)
Sausages can be Fried Fingers, Pirates Porkers, or Buccaneers Bangers, and if you do hot dogs, just pop in a cocktail stick with a paper sail on it, and you have
Sausage Ships, or is that Ships Sausages, or maybe Sea Dogs. And of course
chiplotas are Shipolatas
Chicken drumsticks – parrots legs or seagull legs
Cherry tomatoes could be scorpion’s eyeballs
Then there’s Castaways cutlets - those horrid deep fried chicken mince things.
Rat Burgers with blood sauce sounds more appealing than burgers and ketchup, though if you’re not too keen on the disgusting, you can always go for Buccaneer’s Burgers.
How about a few dips along the lines of Bogie Dip (my favorite because I love avocado) and a few bowls of Cheesy Scabs (cheese ‘n’ onion crisps) There are even some crunchy snacks that look like they could be fried maggots. Tasty!
And for Desert
Fish Eyes in Blood is green grapes in a bowl of sloppy red jelly
Blood and Guts is chopped fruit in red jelly and you can serve it with a topping of parrot poo which is of course any off-white ice cream with bits in eg toffee and nut. – Delicious!
If you’ve gone for the romantic option call it Tropical Surprise from the Wild Islands or Treasure Island Fruit salad or Tropical surprise.
Drinks
Ginger Beer (or cola) makes good GROG, just about anything could be RUM as hopefully none of the children know what real rum tastes like – if you have two different soft drinks they can be Caribbean Rum and Jamaica Rum, and how about BILGE WATER? It sounds disgusting so children will love it. It’s the water that collects in the very bottom of a ship, and contains everything nasty that gets washed down there. Any cloudy fruit juice mixed with water, with maybe some crushed tropical fruits (Kiwi, banana, strawberry etc) to make it look disgusting will go down well, and it is cheaper and more healthy than the traditional fizzy junk.
None of this needs any more preparation than any other party food, but children will enjoy the game of eating rats and blood.
Booty Bags and Swag Bags
Most parents groan at the very thought of party bags, whether it’s having to provide them, or having to chuck all that rubbish in the bin as soon as it arrives home.
There are however some reasonable ones, already filled with exactly what you need for a pirates swag bag. Alternatively you can make up your own, and get everything you need from an on-line mail order company so you don’t have to go looking for it.
Try the links below to go to suppliers that we particularly recommend
Bumblebags
Entertainment
And don't
forget to book a good entertainer - we recommend Professor Paradox, but
then we would wouldn't we!
