Gone Fishing

We love to go fishing! Here's a quick activity I made up for Spice last night so she can practice reeling in the big one and reading at the same time. The fishing pole and plastic sea creatures came from Dollar Tree. There's a magnet on the fishing line and on each of the toys. She has played with it every day since she got it. I decided to capitalize on the fun last night by adding in my own fish. I cut fish shapes out of cardstock, added some eyes and a couple of other features to one side, wrote a word on the other side, then slid a paper clip on each fish. Whenever she catches a fish she turns it over and reads the word to find out what kind of fish she's caught (a pig fish, six fish...her favorite is the "lips" fish.) If you wanted to get all fancy schmancy, you could laminate the fish and write words with a dry erase marker. I'm too lazy for all that so I'll just toss these and make some new fish when she's ready.
If you can't find a fishing game like this, you can make your own pole. I did a similar activity for Sport several years ago. I got a stick from the back yard, tied a string to it, hooked a paper clip to the other end of the string, and stuck a magnet on the paper clip. I made bigger fish for him and spread them out in our plastic swimming pool. He spent a lot of time fishing in his own back yard!