Phonics Fishing

This is a fun phonics activity to focus on the individual letter sounds your child has learnt and is learning. Or it can be used to teach colours or numbers. This activity did involve more preparation than other activities I normally do. But once you have created your egg box playing boards, they can easily be recycled to play again.

Set Up

You will need the following: egg boxes; magnetic letters, magnetic fishing rods (ours were from a fishing game the girls already had); blank stickers or white paper.

I chose sounds that were either relatively new to my eldest or ones that she often confused eg ‘p,’ ‘b,’ ‘d.’ Then picked these ones from our fridge magnets and arranged on a tray. Finally I wrote those sounds onto blank stickers, cut them out and put them into the egg box compartments. As my youngest was playing too, I created colour stickers to put into her egg box compartments instead.

As the girls started to play I quickly realised that this game was also great for their motor skills and turn taking too. My youngest struggled to use her fishing rod and I wound the string round to make it shorter and a little easier for her. My eldest was very keen to have one sound to put in each of her compartments and was very good at saying each sound as she caught it. F. enjoyed putting the magnets in her box and was keen to get lots in there but each colour that she caught was referred to as “blue”! But hopefully the more we play activities involving colours the more she will understand.

M. was so proud of finally getting a sound in each box and was desperate for me to record her achievement before her younger sister could wreck it! Afterwards F. was keen to get the fish out that normally go with the fishing rods and we played with both the fish and the letters. As the fish were the same colours we could attempt to sort the colours again. And then they carried on playing whilst I snuck off and got started with dinner.