DIY Backyard Fishing Activity

The hands-down favorite activ­ity from our Wild Kratts Birth­day fun was the fish­ing activ­ity! The kids kept going back to this all.night.long! Back­yard fish­ing at its finest!

This activ­ity could be used for a whole vari­ety of birth­day party themes! But with the hot sum­mer months com­ing up, mag­netic back­yard fish­ing would also make for a fan­tas­tic out­door water­play activ­ity any­time! It’s not only easy to make, but an inex­pen­sive kids’ activ­ity that you can do for under $10!

DIY Back­yard Fish­ing Activ­ity How-to:

Sup­plies:

• Bait Fish (NOT real ones, but the squishy plas­tic vari­ety. The key is that there is a lit­tle metal or plas­tic loop present on the fish)
• Wire Cut­ters
• Metal Paper Clips
• Wooden dow­els or small tree branches
• Twine or fish­ing line
• Mag­nets
• Hot glue

Direc­tions:

1. First up, you’ll need to get your fish. This was Mr. Mom Endeav­ors’ bril­liant idea!  As we were wan­der­ing the aisles of Wal­mart (hav­ing already tried to find some kind of “toy” fish at numer­ous stores), we hap­pened to pass the sport­ing goods sec­tion and he saw the bait. These fish were less than $3/package and worked out perfectly!

2. The most impor­tant thing with the fish is obvi­ously cut­ting off the hooks! Mr. Mom Endeav­ors just used some wire cut­ters and snipped them off as far down as pos­si­ble. Once all the hooks have been cut off, then lace one metal paper clip through the loop on the bait.

3. Once you have your fish, you’ll need some mag­netic fish­ing poles to “catch” them. We had a cou­ple of branches and a 1/2″ dowel cut into two pieces. All you need to do is tie some twine to one end. Then, on the open end hang­ing down, just hot-glue the twine between two mag­netic but­tons. *Note–not all mag­netic but­tons are cre­ated equal. We found that the ones from the hard­ware store worked much bet­ter than the “crafty” ones.

4. Once you have your fish & poles, all you need is some­where to fish. We used a big plas­tic pool we already had & par­tially filled it with water (yes, the mag­nets still work in water). But if you don’t have one, there are plenty of items you could get cre­ative with!

So, not only is it easy & inex­pen­sive to put together, but there are a lot of great “learn­ing through play” oppor­tu­ni­ties with it. With this, you can talk about mag­net­ism, float­ing vs. sink­ing, and even top­ics related to ecology–all the while work­ing on coordination/motor skills!

Happy Back­yard Fishing!!

Linked to: *Show & Share, *Today’s Cre­ative, *Tip Junkie, *Show and Tell, *Tidy­Mom