Junee Public School welcomes Pirate Day Friday: ahoy me hearties

In its fourth year Pirate Day Friday, a national fundraiser, encouraged communities to dress up and give a gold coin donation to raise money for The Kids Cancer Project. 

Junee Public School Principal, Tracy Delaney, said this day engages the children through the pirate theme, which is incorporated into the literacy and numeracy lessons. 

“We’ve had a variety of numeracy and literacy based activities with the pirate theme, right through from kindergarten to year 6,” she said. 

“Some of those have been where students have created their own treasure maps through coordinates in maths and we’ve had reading theatre involving role play, and the children really loved that.” 

Junee Public School chose to get behind this charity due to the prevalence of childhood cancer in Australia. 

“With more than 190 children aged between 1  to 14 die from cancer each year, with almost half of these deaths related to a child with brain cancer, we decided that Pirate Day Friday was a charity we wanted to support,” Ms Delaney said. 

“Our students walk away from the day knowing how important it is to support others in need and how awareness leads to fundraising, which then leads to more scientists researching for better treatments and a cure."

Col Reynolds OAM, founder of The Kids’ Cancer Project is delighted with the initiative. 

“It’s great to have a bit of fun to fund raise despite the serious nature of kids’ cancer,” he said. 

“Many people aren’t aware that cancer is the leading cause of death of children by disease in Australia.”

Since Pirate Day Friday started in 2015, over $300,000 has been raised Australia-wide for medical research to help kids with brain cancer.