One of the many many rainy day activities that have happened at our kindy is making a fishing game. The teachers drew some of the fish shapes and some children attempted their own fish shapes (pre-writing fine motor skill development, spatial visualisation).
The children cut all the fish out using their developing scissor skills, and decorated them. The fish then went for a swim in a large tray. Now the challenge…fish them out! We used some fishing poles we already had which is simply a short pole with a heavy duty magnet on the end (try a craft store for the magnet if you’re making your own). With a metal paper clip on the nose of each fish, the children had to manipulate the magnet so it would pick up the fish.
To extend on the activity, the children are then directed to pick up a blue fish, or a red fish etc (colour recognition, listening to instructions). Another way to extend the activity is to have the child/children make their own choices about what to fish out, then sort them at the end (categorising, colour recognition) and count how many in each group (counting).
Often with this activity, it can be suggested to the children that we write something on the fish. This can be numbers, letters or words, in order to extend these learning areas. As it was early in the year, I think the orange group stuck to colours.
So you can see, this deceptively fun activity is actually hiding lots of learning areas for your children. It’s also easy for you to replicate at home. I’ve included a pic of the game I made with my own son at home. He was very involved and very soon the fish was swimming in a sea designed and cut out by him and we sorted and counted our fish too. See where yours can lead!
Thanks to Lawnton Kindy
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