An Old Game with a New Twist

This week Alissa and Jake have been attending Vacation Bible School.  One night Jacob came home with a fishing pole with a magnet attached to the end of the line.  The "Teacher Bells" started ringing in my head at the possibilities!  When the children got home with the pole, they wanted to make fish to play like they were fishing.  I had to convince them it was too late for them and that I would make some while they slept.  I kept my word.  When they awoke, they had a pile of fish awaiting them.  I waited until morning to finish them so that the children could join in the fun of finishing them.  Jacob has been working on letters, numbers to 20, and a few sight words.  As I wrote these on the fish, the kiddos attempted to put gem clips on the fish.  When we finished, the children were so excited about getting to catch fish.  (It was also fun listening to them say they were catching fish like Peter from their Bible story the night before!)  They were so excited about playing a new game that they didn't even realize it was school work.  Haha!  One point for Mommy!  :)




Each time a fish was caught the fisherman had to say what was on the fish in order to keep it.  If the fisherman didn't know "what type of fish" she or he had, the fish had to be thrown back into the sea. 

When the game was over, I had Alissa choose whether she wanted to make up sentences with the words she caught or use the words to make up and write a story since she already knew the letters, numbers, and words.  To my surprise, she decided to make up and write a story.  It was too cute to watch her go catch more fish for her story.

Other fishing game ideas:

• Let the fishermen catch the words of a memory verse and have them put the words in the correct order.
• Put each vocabulary word on a fish, and put each definition of separate fish.  Have the fisherman catch to words and definitions and then match each word with the correct definition.
• Have questions from a story on separate fish and the answers on separate fish.  Have the fisherman match the questions to the correct answer.
• After catching numbers or letters , have the fisherman put the numbers or letters in the correct order.

The possibilities are endless!  What ideas for other variations do you have?

Until we meet again, may you be blessed!