well, why haven’t we done THIS before?!?!?
what a hit. when paper is crumpled and then flattened and then painted on with coffee (freshly made or leftover), a wonderfully old looking piece of paper is created! it is a little more impressive when an actual coffee cup is used and even more impressive yet when the coffee is still hot and even MORE impressive yet when your teachers are drinking out of matching coffee cups!
the next day the papers were dry and ready to draw on.
it was also nice to have a “compass rose artist” in the room one day.
later in the week we added pre-drawn treasure maps from on line to crumple and paint.
hanging them to dry with fans was helpful.
stay tuned to see if those maps helped us find our treasure! AAAAARGH!!!
newcreationpreschool.com 
You have so many great ideas on your blog. I love the treasure maps. The pirate themed adventures look like a blast!
Fantastic idea I was thinking you could find some golden nuggets at a creek and hide them in a container of sand/sandpit and have a related treasure map for the children to search for the nuggets of gold. Or perhaps fossicking for gold nuggets could be a teachable moment if you have some resources. You could face paint the children with pirate masks and make paper hats.
Love this idea! I think the X theme with pirates is so much fun! Way more fun than the traditional X-ray unit.