Gone Fishin'

Today I was babysitting my adorable 2 year old nephew. The first thing I hear when he arrives this morning is that he wants to go fishing. Well, actual fishing wasn't possible. But this cute kid absolutely loves fishing and absolutely loved his Diego fishing pole when we went on a family fishing trip back in September. So while he was distracted watching Cars I worked on a project to make pretend fishing possible.

First, I started with some construction paper and cut out fish shapes and drew goldfish faces and fins. I got some magnets and photo laminate paper.

I followed the directions of the photo laminate and got the fish laminated. I cut the laminate in the shape of the fish. I left about half an inch of extra around the construction paper so that water won't easily get in. Then I got some industrial strength glue so that the magnets would stick to the laminate and still survive under water. I used E-600 Industrial strength. I put them on the tail so the faces won't be covered. I didn't have plain square magnets so I used my cheap Wal-Mart magnets that are actually very strong.

Yay fish!

I took some string and tied it to the end of a tree branch. I took a piece of leftover laminate from when I cut out the fish and punched a hole into it. I glued a magnet to the piece of laminate then tied it to the other end of string. I considered attaching a laminated worm for effect. I may do that at a later date :)

Now that's old school.

I got out the old duck bathtub from when my nephew was an infant and filled it with water. Ta-dah! Fishing time! He was so excited when he caught his first fish!

I did this to have some fun. But after watching him really concentrating on catching the fish, I realized this was a great hand-eye coordination exercise. He had to really work at getting that little magnet lined up with the little magnet on the fish to pull them out. After he caught the first one, he started catching them faster!