Camp Mama Notes Mermaid & Pirate Activities

We are heading back to the beach for Camp Mama Notes this week – taking fun adventures at sea with mermaids and pirates! In case you missed it you can find all of our Space Week camp activities here and Beach Week camp activities here!

Mermaid Dolls

Supplies:
Clothes Pins
Felt or Fabric
Yarn
Hot Glue Gun
Paint

Directions:

1. Paint the clothespins different skin tones and paint the dress/body. Let dry.
2. Cut yarn the desired length of the hair and hot glue it to the top of the head.
3. Cut the mermaid fin out of felt, fabric or cardstock paper and glue it into the slit of the clothes pin.
4. Decorate with sequins, glitter or markers!

Telescopes

These were so fun to make and are great for treasure hunts or keeping a look out during imaginative play! The challenge was finding paper rolls of a variety of sizes so you can nest them inside each other. If you can’t find them, you could just use thick cardstock to make the smaller size roll.

Supplies

2 paper rolls of varying sizes
Hot glue
Paper or paint
Glitter cardstock

Directions

Cover the paper rolls in paper or paint and decorate. Nest the smaller one inside of the larger and hot glue together.

Pirate Ships

We are going to be making a similar version of this egg crate pirate ship this week!

Supplies
Egg carton
Paint
Wooden skewer or paper straws
Cardstock or felt

Treasure Chests

These were so easy and fun to make! I used egg crates I had leftover from Easter, but you can just paint a 6-egg carton from the grocery store to achieve a similar look.

Hot glue glitter paper and sequins on and voila your own treasure chest!

Treasure Hunt Snack

My girls have been waiting anxiously for their treasure hunt snack since they first saw the treasure boxes! You can do this a few ways depending on your child’s age and interest.

1. Draw a treasure map with landmarks and have your child visit each spot to find a treat or snack. At the very end have the X mark the treasure box and fill it with snacks or a surprise.
2. Make clue cards to give to your child that leads them on a treasure hunt, you can draw pictures or use words.

DIY Kinetic Sand

Create an invitation to play with painted shells, mermaid dolls and this simple DIY kinetic sand! It requires only 3 ingredients!

Mermaid Slime

Our sand slime was such a big hit that I knew Piper would be excited to make another batch!

4 ounces of clear school glue
1 tsp baking soda
2-3 tbs saline solution
Food coloring, glitter, mix-ins

1. Combine the glue and baking soda, glitter and food coloring and stir until combined.
2. Pour in the contact solution and continue to stir.
3. Remove and knead by hand until it’s stretchy, bouncy and ready to play.

Sea Shell Matching

There are several variations you can give to this activity – all you need to do is cut out shells from cardboard to start with.

We are practicing lower case letter recognition with my 5 year old, so I taped on upper case and lower case letters onto the shells to have her match. You could also do the same thing with sight words or match numbers with dots to practice counting.

Screen Time

We Are The Pirates song (again, sorry in advance)!! 

Cosmic Kids PIRATE Yoga

Cosmic Kids MERMAID Yoga

A Kid Explains History: Pirate Episode

Jake and the Never Land Pirates: Battle for the Book

The Pirate Fairy

Snacks

Mermaid Munch Snack Mix: I made this for Piper’s 3rd birthday party and it was a big hit! 

These Pirate Cupcakes are adorable – you could also save a step and get store bought ones to decorate. 

This mermaid bark is almost too pretty to eat!