Dr. Seuss: Fishing game

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish is one of the most recognizable Dr. Seuss books. One thing that I love about Dr. Seuss books is that there are so many activities that can accompany them! This is a game I've used for years. I like that the game can be adjusted according to the child's age and skill level.


You will need:

• A dowel rod (whatever length is manageable for your child)
• string (yarn or even kitchen twine will work here, too!)
• magnet
• hot glue gun
• fish cut-outs
• paper clips or stick-on magnets
  

Using your hot glue gun, attach one end of the string to a medium-to-large magnet. You want it to be large enough to attach to your fish somewhat easily. As you can see, when I made this, I squeezed out a big puddle of glue, but you want the string to hold well. It doesn't have to be pretty. :)


Attach the other end of the string to the dowel rod using more hot glue. I wrap the excess string around the dowel a few times to keep the length of the string manageable, and to give the end of the string that is glued a little more support.


Scatter your fish cut-outs on the floor. Each fish should have either a magnet attached, or you can attach a paper clip to it instead and that will work just fine. My fish were cut years ago from an Ellison machine and then laminated, but you can draw fish on construction paper to cut out or choose some cute ones to print.

In the past, I've used this game for matching capital and lowercase letters ("Fish for the letter 'b,' "Find the match for 'N'"), phonics sounds ("What letters make the 'ch' sound?"), spelling ("Find the letters that spell 'watch'"), and rhyming ("Can you find a rhyme for the word 'take?'"). However, it would be easy to use this game for math facts, state capitals, or anything else your child is currently learning. Since my daughter is still quite young, we'll just be using this game for hand-eye coordination. :)