Pirate Sword Party Favors - Treats for Camp Hike

We did our girls camp this year to an underwater, ocean, boat, pirate type theme. 
 
I shared in yesterday's post about how we made a treasure map by scouting a hike before and planning where we would do lessons and give out treats. Here is a link to that post. 

We had each Jr. Leader give a little lesson at a specific place on the map. We wanted to give out a handout that would go along with the message.

Some spots we gave out charms and others apples, drinks etc. We wanted a sweet item they could enjoy while hiking so we talked about making sword out of sweets as at one spot we wanted to talk about "how to defend yourself against pirates." 
 
Pirates use swords so I came up with an idea to make swords out of some candy sticks I already had. 

We had the Jr. Leaders dressed as pirates and here is a post on how we made their costumes cheap and inexpensively. 

You can make these out of pencils and they would actually be sharp at the tip so they could be cute for a Pirate themed birthday or class party for primary aged children.

There are two ways to make them. One with a hand shield or without. Since it was for older kids and on a hike, the less garbage the better. I didn't make the hand shield but show on the video above how to make them and will share in the written form as well.

Basically, cut card stock paper in the shape of a large band-aid. Curve the ends. Use a punch to punch a hole in both ends of the paper band-aid just large enough to fit your candy stick or pencil into. 

To make the "shield" cut a round piece out of the card stock, silver would be cute, clip and "X" in the center of the circle and slip the pencil into the "x" and then slip one end of the band-aid on and then the other on pushing them close together so that the center of the band-aid shaped piece pokes out making the handle. 

It is easy enough that you can have the children make their own handle and shield. You could even make these for a castle or knight themed party and actually make a paper "shield" with a crest colored onto it for a favor as well. I think cub scouts, girl scouts, knights groups, and achievement day kids would have fun making these. Our middle school has "Castle Days" where each kid makes a castle from trash. Here is a post one about Princess Five making hers and post two on finishing it up. Here is another on her winning a prize.

In order to keep them from breaking, I stuck them in a large can for transport before the Jr. Leaders stuck them onto our pirates platter for the girls to "find" on their treasure hunt. 

These were cute and made the point for the lesson we intended. I think someday I may actually use these for a grandma party and have them find a treasure and maybe even use the same map and hike our girls did. It was a fun idea.  
 
As an afterthought, I searched "Sword" on my blog as I have been writing over five years now, I can't remember all my posts. Up came last years girls camp where we had a "fairy tale" theme and they used swords and shields for that, wouldn't this have been a cute and easy handout for that. Here is a link to that post where they made actual size swords and shields out of cardboard.