Treasure Island Pirate Party Game

When putting together a Pirate themed party for L, I wanted to include some fun games. I asn’t sure how many kids were coming, or how advanced their abilites were siince I was inviting lots of kids from his preschool. I came up with the Treasure Island Pirate Party both as both a decoration and a fun game for the kids to play.

At a pirate party, digging for treasure is a must. Our backyard is not ideal for digging in, so this allowed each child to dig for their own personal treasure stash!

This is what I used to make the Palm Trees on my Treasure Islands. Plain green construction paper, paper straws I found in the football party section at Target, and some awesome EKSuccess Tools. I used the zig-zag paper scissors, the fine-pointed paper scissors, and the EKSuccess permanent adhesive dispenser.

I folded the construction paper in half to cut two sets of palm fronds at the same time. I love that the EKSuccess Tools were strong enough to cut through both layers.

I also love that L loved “helping”.

Leaving a 1/2″ to 3/4″ strip connecting the leaves, I cut away the excess paper with the fine tipped scissors.

I love the adhesive dispenser. It was so easy to use – I just ran a strip of adhesive across the strip connecting the palm fronds.

Then I rolled it up on the end of the straw, with the leaves pointing up.

All that was left was to curl down the leaves. I used one of the extra straws to do this.

I didn’t just want my islands on the table, so I taped together 8 pieces of blue construction paper, flipped the paper so the tape was on the back and didn’t show, and then cut around the edges with the EKSuccess curvy scissors to make the lake/ocean/body of water that the islands would sit in.

 I made two triple batches of playdoh. Playdoh is super easy to make. Here is how to make a single batch:

Dump 1 cup flour, 1 cup warm water, 2 teaspoons cream of tartar, 1 teaspoon oil, and 1/4 cup salt into a pot on the stove. Stir well with whisk, but have a spatula close by. Add food coloring – I used 1 drop red, one drop green, and three drops yellow per single batch.
Cook on medium heat, stirring with the whisk. When it gets too thick for the whisk, switch to the spatula. When it gets too thick for the spatula, dump it onto the counter. Don’t worry about gooey spots. Knead the dough until cool, and any doughey spots will resolve themselves.

I split each triple batch into 5 balls. Into each ball I inserted some plastic dubloons, a top, and a sparkly bouncy ball (all of which I found at the party store). This is the “treasure” that would be dug up later.

I put the filled playdoh balls into clear plastic cups, then wrapped everything up with plastic wrap for the night, so they wouldn’t dry out and could be quickly assembled in the morning.

I had a little help the next day setting up the Treasure Islands. We were all done…

 all that was left was to dig into them!

EKSuccess products are available at select WalMarts. See more great EKSuccess projects on the EKSuccess facebook page, Spotted Canary blog, or by checking out one of the fun projects below!

Disclosure: This port was written as part of a fun campaign with EKSuccess and the Blueprint Social. The opinions and project and ideas are my own.

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