Woohoo! Day 100! It feels like I have been doing this a lot longer than 100 days but either way. It's a milestone and I made it! Only 265 more days and then I can celebrate one year!
So since today was a big day I busted out a BIG project. Me made indoor fishing.
Check the Nitty Gritty if you are interested in all the details but here are pictures to show what we did.
This last one is not a great picture but Sam really wanted to hold up her fish and show it off for the camera.
Let's just say that indoor fishing is a HUGE hit and Sam is very ready to try out the real thing. Probably won't happen yet this year but I think a fishing set under the Christmas tree is a definite must.
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The Nitty Gritty!
First the fishing pole -
A quick visit to the hardware store for a dowel rod, thin rope and a heavy duty magnet.
The magnet conveniently had a hole in it that I could tie the rope through.
I nailed the rope (through a knot that I tied) to the pole. I was worried about the rope slipping off. But I didn't pay attention to how long the nail was (please don't stop reading my blog because I am a complete fishing rod making moron!) and it poked out the other end. So I had to wrap it with tape. Next time I will just skip the nail.
Then there's the fish. I found some fish coloring pages online to use as templates and then just cut out construction paper fish. I thought I was going to have to use washers or something heavy to attract to the magnet but plastic coaded paper clips worked perfectly. I put one on each end so that they were easier to grab for Sam.
We had Sam sit on her "boat" and the fish were on the floor. We also tried having her fish "blind" by sitting on another couch with the fish on the other side (behind the back of the couch). She didn't really understand this method and just kept standing up to see where the fish were. I think this would be fun with older kids. We also put the fish inside a hulla hoop and told Sam she had to stay outside the hulla hoop to catch them all. She could walk all the way around the hoop to get to the fish but still had the challenge of trying to hook the ones that she wanted.
We used this fishing activity to practice colors, counting and following directions. She had a blast seeing how many fish she could catch with one "cast" (dragging the magnet through all the fish). With older kids the idea of what magnets are and experimenting with what will make it possbile to catch the fish would be a great way to expand this activity; you could put a wooden clothespin on the fish, paperclips, plastic bag clips, etc. to talk about what can be picked up by a magnet and what can't.
This takes a little bit of supplies and prep work but I think it is a set that we will keep and use a lot this Fall/Winter.
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