A Fishy Project

    Afternoons are always the most difficult time for me, keeping our kids entertained while not allowing them to run my life or just turn into zombies in front of the TV. The mornings are easy what with all the routine a morning brings- topped off by a walk around the neighbourhood or a visit to the park before it gets scorching hot. But oh those afternoons! Left to their own devices these wee ones of mine will and have wrecked havoc on our tiny apartment.

    Enter in the afternoon crafting sessions, everything from markers and crayons to more elaborate painted works on canvas have happened on or around our kitchen table and out on the deck. The kids have a great time exploring and learning about different mark making- and lets face it getting messy!

    And so I present to you an easy peasy afternoon fishing project. All you need is some heavy cardstock paper - the kids picked white so you can see the colours better, twine, a chop stick( because doesn't everyone have a million of these floating around in the back of the utensil drawer?) or other stick to use as the fishing pole- do you see where this is going? How easy is this? In our house the hole puncher and scissors are mom's part of the project- that is only because the fish would get riddled with holes( the boy) or turned to confetti ( Miss Lo).

   All you do is draw a funny fish- here I wielded the marker and was art directed by the kids- older kids can obviously draw their own fish. Have the kids colour or decorate the fish how they want- we just went for crayons yesterday as this project was on the fly & they wanted to get to the good part! Punch a hold near the mouth of the fish- tie one end of the twine to the fish and the other end to the fishing pole- Et Voila!

 
     And now for the good part! The actual project took only about 20 minutes but the "fishing" went on for hours! I did end up eating more than my fill of imaginary fish and I'm sure I put on a few pounds but the shrieks and giggles were music to my ears and meant that I could bake buns for dinner. Art projects are always better when you can play with them!

                                                                         P.S.

   Our fish were heavily influenced by one of our favourite colouring books- My Beastly Book Of Monsters. This is possibly one of the best activity books I have ever come across and at $13.95 (Canadian) it was worth every penny!