Foam fish numbers game

As part of our fish theme this week I made a fishing game to help Sweetpea with recognising amounts of one to three. Although she counts well up to 12, we are still working on understanding just how many THREE are. So, I made a special die that would only have one, two or three dots per side. For this I used a polystyrene cube, and drew on the circles with a black marker.

I cut the fish from craft foam and again used a black marker for drawing the dots. I also added a few unnumbered fish with different facial expressions.

Since it was a beautifully sunny day, we took the game outside on the grass and she was fishing from atop the trampoline. To play, she had to follow my instructions. I could say: "Throw the die. OK, you threw a three. Now find the blue fish with three dots on its body." Or, I asked her to catch the sad-looking orange fish. This is a really simple little game and we played for only a few minutes, but since she is a bit wary of counting these days, it was perfect - we practiced a  few number concepts and before she was bored, we were done!

For bath time I removed the paper clips and when the foam got wet, it stuck nicely to the side of the bath, so we rehearsed our numbers again in a playful way!

The rod we used came with a magnetic puzzle that is part of the range of Nucleus Toys which I sell. The fish puzzle is now out of stock, but I have this lovely butterflies and bugs puzzle available for R40 each, so let me know if you would like to order one!

 Also, I sell the craft foam I used to make the fish with, at R8 for a pack of three sheets in assorted colours.