Oliver’s topic at school for the last few weeks has been on Pirates. He has really enjoyed this and was excited that his class assembly was going to be all about Pirates. He came home with the script and we practiced his lines – first he would stand by the front door and recite them, and then he would race upstairs to his bedroom and recite them. He was very loud and very clear! He told us that he would be holding a microphone too. The morning of the assembly dawned and we all went in to school together. We dropped Oliver off at his classroom and saw all the cool costumes laid out ready for them to change into. Owen and I went to the Theatre to wait for the production to begin!
We had asked permission for Isabelle to come and watch and so she joined us in the Theatre just as Assembly was getting started. (Assembly is for Infants so it was all the classes in Year 1 and 2.) After some announcements and recognition for “Stars of the Week” it was on to the main event.
The class started by introducing themselves – with their Pirate names. Oliver’s was Long Blue Pete.
As the show went on, Owen and I were amazed to see Oliver performing more than we had practiced. All of a sudden he was also the Pirate King!

The Pirate King, AKA Long Blue Pete, is on the right delivering a birthday present to the Pirate Queen.
It was a wonderful performance by a lovely group of 5 and 6 year olds. They all sang beautifully, remembered their lines and obviously enjoyed being on stage. Oliver closed it out at the end with his 2 lines that we had rehearsed. Mrs Finan told us right after that the original Pirate King was sick and she needed somebody to stand in. As Oliver had done such a good job learning the script (plenty of help from Isabelle too) she had asked him to “save the day”. He did brilliantly and we were so proud of him. You would never have known that he jumped in at the last minute.
All the parents took lots of photos at the end:
As well as practicing for the Assembly, Oliver also had a homework project to create his own Treasure Island. We had fun finding things at home to make this – he had toilet roll and tissue paper palm trees, a jewelry box as a treasure chest, painted little pebbles for gold, brown sugar for sand, a volcano, pirate ship and pirate. The finishing touch was a selection of Oliver’s shells that he has collected from our various trips abroad. He worked so hard on this and the end result looked fantastic.