Friday, September 28, 2007

Let's go fishing!

When we were in Las Vegas this summer visiting my Mom in law we went to the FAO Schwartz store in Caesars Palace. There I saw this fishing game and knew my son would love it. He pretends strings, ropes even my hubby's cell phone ear piece are fishing lines but I couldn't justify the 20 something dollars for a bunch of cardboard fish and things that I knew my boy would fold and crumple. Plus when I showed it to my hubby and his response was "Oh, we can make that so much better."

So one of my last nesting projects 6 and a half weeks ago was making this fishing game for my son. I found a small tupperware bin at a local thrift store and decoupaged the inside with strips of light blue tissue paper. The bin is large enough to store all the pieces and to play by fishing the pieces out of it. I had Adam drill holes in four dowels and painted each one a different color for each different player.

I tied string to each dowel and dabbed the knots with super glue to make it extra secure. At the opposite end of the string I tied a magnet with the help of hot glue to secure it before I tied it, then reinforced the knots with super glue as well.

For the fish I printed pictures that I found online (i.e. clown fish, crab, blue whale etc.). I also printed the names of all the fish and taped them to the backs. After slipping on a paper clip I covered both sides of each cut out fish with self laminate to prolong their life span.

It was really pretty fun to make and for $15 I made two of them, one for my nephew also - I think a pretty good bargain! I have been thinking that if you printed the fish on cardstock you could use packaging tape to cover the smaller size fish instead of the laminate which was the most expensive component. With older kids you might not even have to laminate at all.

We are just having fun learning how to take turns but really your imagination is the limit. I think it would be fun to fish for letters and make words or with words to make sentences etc.

If you want to participate in the Make it from Scratch Carrnival Stephanie from Stop the Ride is hosting this week and she's got a theme. She wants to know where in the world we are - country or state. Get your post up and submitted by Sunday for next Tuesday's carnival!!

Hours of fun!!!

8 comments:

Stephanie Appleton said...

What a fun game! He seems to really enjoy it.

Reminds me of an ABC game have. You could easily give this an ABC spin. The game we have has cardboard fish with letters on them, and bingo type boards with the letters on (the fish is all capitals, the board has caps on one side and lower case on the other.) They go fish for the letters and match them to the board. My kids love this game. You could easily make it yourself. Just an idea.

Good to see you back around again!

Wendy said...

Looks like he loved it!

Nicki said...

Great game! My kids love to play fishing too. I used their light sabers with two sided tape on the tips for the fishing poles. Then, I cut out paper fish and had them color them. LOL! Your way is much better. My way didn't last long because the tape always ended up full of carpet lint and hair. :)

Jamie said...

Oh you are so crafty! Looks like your son is loving it!!

Mamacita Tina said...

Looks like a great game! I'm glad I read this, I have something similar stashed away in one of my boxes from when I was teaching second grade. It has words the kids fished out and read, too advanced for Ian. But we're working on taking turns also, so I love the idea of finding fish pictures. Making fish with the letters from the alphabet is a good idea too!

Thank you for the idea.

Anonymous said...

what a great idea--my kids would love that!

*carrie* said...

Very creative! My son isn't even a year old yet, and my husband is already wanting to get him "hooked" on fishing!

momteacherfriend said...

We have done a version of this.

We cut out fish shapes and put the ABCs and Numbers on them. If they could say the letter or number they could keep the fish. If not they threw it back. To make it more challenging as our son got older he would say a word that started with that letter.