Jean Laffitte lesson

Jean Laffite is a real historical figure.  He was a pirate and probably a few other things that sailed mainly out of New Orleans until he got kicked out of there and then he moved to Galveston, where he founded the town. He started out being part of a geography lesson for our Louisiana Unit as we studied United States Geography, but then turned into a super cute book and activity, and finally led to me having some fun with US history as I learned more about him.

That’s a lot of work for a little picture book.

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Jean Lafitte lesson resources

Jean Laffite and the Big Ol’ Whale is a cute tall tale about how he saved New Orleans when a whale got stuck in the Mississippi River. If you’re working with older kids check out Jean Lafitte, the Pirate who Saved America.

If you want to get a little more historical, here are some videos about who he was, and how quite probably we wouldn’t have New Orleans without him.

Now, if you want a slightly less historical take on this, here’s a storyteller talking about Jean Lafitte.

Moving into some resources you can read online:

• Jean Lafitte from National Battlefields
• Jean Lafitte National Park– I highly recommend completing the Junior Ranger badge online for elementary kids
• Jean Lafitte World history encyclopedia

Okay, all of that will let you dig up a really good Jean Lafitte lesson for older kids. My kids were in kindergarten when we did this (says Future Ticia 2023), so we did a craft. After the craft, I’ll give you some tall tales tips.

Jean Lafitte craft

Here’s what you need: googly eyes, milk cartons, blue paper (I’m greatly amused the best one I could find was Christmas paper, but you get the idea), glue, paint, and paintbrush

Princess opted to paint hers, so she had the relatively simple job of just putting lots of blue paint all over it.

She really enjoyed doing it this way because we haven’t painted for a while, at least not with tempera paint.

The boys went with the “decoupage” option and glued and tore to their hearts’ content.

The only challenging part is cutting out a vaguely tail-shaped blue piece to glue on the back of the milk carton.

We all really enjoyed making our whales, and it was quite the project.  Now I need to scrounge up more milk cartons for any future projects I come up with.

Tall Tales lesson from Jean Lafitte

I’ve got a few other tall tales posts, so I’m going to summarize what I said in those:

• make a chart to show what could happen and what can’t happen
• look at exaggerations included to make the story more memorable
• look for phrases used as character tags

Jean Lafitte lesson

Jean Lafitte is a minor character in history, for a couple of specific locations he is very important. He helped shape the history of both New Orleans and Galveston, but his contributions do not require people to learn his name to know what’s going on.

That doesn’t make him not a fun lesson. So here are a few suggestions I’d recommend if you want to expand on him:

• Compare him to other pirates
• was he a pirate or a privateer?
• are the statements he “saved America” exaggeration or were his efforts useful