It's finally time to get to the promised post! This idea was actually inspired by something I saw on Pinterest. Someone had taken a flower pot and painted it with fish, they then had their pre-schooler using it to play games. I thought it was incredibly cute and decided to try and use it in my classroom. Since I, like most teachers, operate on a budget of less than zero, I didn't want to buy flower pots, and I also wanted something with a lid on it for storage purposes. I started my project with an oatmeal container, though any large, round container would do, and I've used the large Nestle Quick containers as well. I then raided my dad's paint cupboard and purchased tester-size containers from Home Depot of the other colors I wanted. The actual work began with peeling off the labels (as best I could, the oatmeal label came off easily, I eventually gave up on the Quick one) and painting the whole container blue. Later I went back and added the sand, fish, seaweed, and sharks (yes, that gray thing is a shark). I was very nervous about this part since I'm not an artist in any sense of the word, but I'd recently had to give the WIDA test, taking over our school's art room to do it, so I wasn't high on our art teacher's favorite people list at the time. They turned out OK though, and my students are used to my lack of artistic abilities anyway. When they complain I offer them the chance to repaint the ponds for me and I'm eagerly waiting for one of them to actually take me up on it! Thus far I have two "Fishing For" activities: contractions and parts of speech, though it would not be hard to make math fact, vocabulary, or other fish. The fish are available in my teacher stores (links provided), ready to print, laminate, and cut. After cutting, I put a paperclip over each fish's mouth. There are several options for the pole, and all seem to work well. If you can find one, the kids' magnet fishing poles are a lot of fun. Unfortunately I only had one and haven't been able to find another since it broke. Most home improvement or hardware stores sell extendable sticks with magnets on the ends. My experience is that these magnets are too powerful and end up picking up A LOT of fish at one time. The cheapest (and least pretty) method that I've used is to take a cheap (read here: sent in the mail for free to advertise some pizza company) magnet and cut it into small squares. I then used a hole punch to put a hole in it and tied a long string to it. Of course using a pole is optional, one can always choose to go noodling (fishing by hand); I'm sure the Department of Fish and Game will forgive you in this instance. The last step is to take everything to school, put the fish in the bucket, and start fishing. The basic idea is that the kids pull a fish out and then identify it in some way (state the two words that make up the contraction, identify the part of speech, etc). As I said, currently I only have two sets of fish but it would not be hard to make others; if you are interested in something specific, please contact me and I'll be happy to assist. Happy fishing, everyone! | Product Links: |
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI've been teaching since 2000 and love what I do! Archives
May 2018
Categories |