Learning the parts of a pirate ship

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Ahoy matey! While studying pirates, we learned a lot about life on a pirate ship. I also wanted to introduce my kids to ship terminology. This post shares two activities we did to learn the parts of a pirate ship.

Note: You can find more pirate-themed activities on my Pirate Unit Study page.

I found this simple but effective parts of a boat printable at Every Star is Different. Using this printable, my kids and I talked about how a boat has a front and back as well as a left side and right side. And we also talked about how each part of the boat has a special name:

Front = bow
Back = stern
Left side = port
Right side = starboard

We reviewed the parts of a boat and the kids glued the labels onto the pirate ship.

To continue to drive home the lesson, we then went outside and used sidewalk chalk to draw our own pirate ship on the driveway. We labeled each of the sides with the special names we had learned.

Once we had created our boat, we played a game. I would call out a part of the boat and they had to run there as fast as they could.

By the time we finished, the kids were laughing so hard. They were also so out of breath from all the running I made them do.

Of course, I also gave them a chance to call out the boat parts too, so they got to make me run as well. But it was a really fun way to learn the parts of a pirate ship, so I’m definitely not complaining. 🙂