This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Fishing Pole Craft
Dec
16
2008
I decided to make a craft with/for the kids. Here are the details.
- Magnets: 12 for $1 = 8.3c per pole
- Poles: 2 for $1 = 50c per pole
- Washers: 30 for $1 = 3c per fish
- String: free from the garage
- Paper: free from just about anywhere
Total per fishing pole: about $0.60
Time spent occupying the kids’ attention: 1.5 hours (includes helping with construction and also playing time)
Not a bad deal when compared to any commercial ventures intended for entertaining kids for that amount of time…
The pole was a dowel from the local big-box hardware-type store. They come in 4-foot lengths, so I bought one, cut it in half, and had two 2-foot poles for the kids. I then stapled (using my construction-type stapler, not a standard paper stapler) a 3-foot length of string to the end of each pole.
I took the magnets that we bought and drilled a hole in the middle of two of them (one per pole). The magnets were the soft (plastic) type, not the hard (ceramic) type. The ceramic type are going to be more powerful, but also more brittle and I wouldn’t want to drill a hole in one of them. I used a small drill bit, the type used for wood, for the magnet. The size was just slightly larger than the string, so that I could thread the string through the hole. I did not put the bit into a drill – I just twisted it by hand. Yes, the magnets are that soft. After threading the string through the hole, I tied a knot in the end to keep the string from unthreading itself.
While I was doing that, the kids were coloring fish that I had cut out of paper. The fish were between two and three inches long. Once the children were finished coloring the fish, I taped the washers to them.
And then? We tested everything – put the fish on a chair and have each child try to pick up a fish using the magnet on the end of the pole. They worked adequately, although I would have liked stronger magnets because the magnets we got don’t have much of a grip. They pick up the fish most of the time but they fall off easily.
The kids slightly enjoyed fishing with the poles. What they really like doing with the poles is pretending they are bows, as in bows and arrows. There are no arrows, but that doesn’t stop them. Since I made the strings longer than the poles, the children started having fun wrapping the string around the pole. Then they noticed if they wrapped only the end of the string around the other end of the pole, that left some extra string in the middle. That extra string resembled a bow, so they started pointing it at things and shooting “arrows”.
Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?
Luke 11:11
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 11:05 pm and has been carefully placed in the Projects category.
December 31st, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Whatever the material at hand is, boys will make weapons. I love it! Maybe next birthdays, we will get the boys bows and arrows….
May 30th, 2011 at 11:07 pm
Thank you for the post. I wasn’t exactly sure how i was going to make these. We are making them for jr church and i can’t wait now. I think i’m going to use the ceramic ones and find a way to keep the magnet attached…maybe hot glue? hmmmmm…well see! GREAT IDEA!