For entertainment we had a pirate ship playground. We recently tore down a wooden deck in our backyard so my husband used the scrap wood to make two pirate ships. We purchased two large sheets of plywood traced our design and cut it to size. The plywood was the bottom of the boats. We then used the scrap wood to make the sides of the boat. It was really simple. The boat came to a point in the front, and was squared off in the back with the sides being straight. One one side we had an opening big enough for kids to walk into the boat and on the other side we made a plank coming out of the opening. There was no top the the boat, just the bottom and the sides. To the back of the boat we added PVC pipe to make a mast. We had one pipe going straight up them added connecters to make a "t". We added a small plastic flower pot to the mast by cutting a hole in the bottem and sliding it on. I pained the whole thing brown and added names to the ships with black paint and stencils. One was the Black Pearl and the other was the Jolly Roger. For some added detail we placed a blow up parrot in each of the planters to serve as the "look out", added a plastic pirate flag to the top of each mast, and added off white fabric to make the sails. We made the sails look old and worn and kind of spooky looking. We placed both ships on a large blue tarp (water) facing each other. I then added a blow up alligater pool toy. For extra decorations around the party area I added left over plastic pirate flags throughout the area.  Game: I divided the kids into two teams and gave them the buckets of cannon balls. When we said go they threw the balls trying to get them into the other ship. Once all cannons were thrown we got the kids all out and counted the cannons. The ship with the most cannons was sunk and that team had to walk the plank into the ocean with the alligator. We then divided the winning team in half and played again. We did this until it was down to two kids and the last kid standing was the winner. We also had a boy and girl winner for this game. I awarded the last girl to be in the game since it ended up being two boys at the end.