Cliftonville pre-school children enjoy pirate day fun

Arrrrr. Little pirates at Cliftonville pre-school

Ahoy there! This week, the children at Cliftonville Primary Pre-School celebrated the end of their learning topic with a pirate themed day.

Their role play area was turned into a huge pirate ship and the children and staff enjoyed dressing up as their favourite pirate. They even had two special visitors, Captain Mason and Pirate Clayson – the school’s IT manager and caretaker – who got into the spirit of the day by dressing up and pretending to steal the children’s treasure.

The Pre-Schoolers ventured over to the main school to hunt them down and bring them back to class to walk the plank.

The festivities didn’t end there, children also enjoyed pirate biscuit making and feast, a treasure hunt and singing a pirate sea shanty or two with parents invited to join in at the end.

Marguerite Tuffs, Pre-School Manager, said: ‘The children have all worked so hard this term and we knew that they would absolutely love to finish it off with a real celebration. Everyone got involved!”

6 Comments

  1. I don’t think piracy is something which should be sanitized and used as an entertainment.

  2. Indeed.
    Pirates, both historically and present day, are most unpleasant people.
    They wouldn’t have stopped at just stealing the children’s gold.

  3. OMG Phyllida and Phyllis…I bet you’re the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ kind of people too!

    They’re PRE schoolers! It’s not a history lesson! By the time they’re old enough to learn about real life pirates, the pirates of children’s books and films will no doubt be long forgotten!

    Just look at various fairytales that you’d presumably prefer…cinderella – slavery, bullying…Jack and the Beanstalk – theft, violence, death (kiling) of soneine who looks different…Hansel and Gretel – child kidnap, attempted child murder, parental abuse of children…traditional stories are full of what *could* be seen as horror themes!

    Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say!

    You couldn’t see the beauty in little children who have to be in nursery actually had a lovely fun day, fully supported by dedicated staff, and instead had to pick fault, without any acknowledgement of the hard work that you must realise goes on behind the scenes every.single.day within nursery and school settings. That’s a sad state of affairs.

    I’m sure there are lots of nurseries who would love volunteers with oodles of ideas for sessions like this and which are pure and wholesome and inoffensive to anyone and everyone, with no nasty themes! Oh wait! You didn’t suggest any better themes, merely wanted to criticise! Typical.

    • Please stop jumping to conclusions.They’re all wrong as far as I’m concerned; I don’t know about Phyllis Quot.

  4. There’s a big difference between folk tales and playing at pirates. Bruno Bettelheim’s “The Uses of Enchantment” is an enlightening read. These stories were not made into bowdlerized fairy tales until the late eighteenth century.

  5. I don’t have a problem with children enjoying themselves. And, given half a chance, that’s what children do. There is a vast difference between “fairy tales”, such as the ones you describe, and the reality of what happened to most people who fell into the clutches of pirates.

    I do have a problem with the sanitizing and sugar coating of what was a terrifying and violent activity.

    What next? Slavery? Boko Haram? Mau-Mau?
    I’m sure that with a little imagination, some cardboard props and a bit of dressing up, a really fun time could be had by all.

Comments are closed.