Letter Fishing

Fishing!
Nik is not exactly sure what one does while fishing, but he does know he desperately wants to do it.
I decided to create an at-home fishing game. 

I picked out 7 different colors of thin foam and free-handed a fish template.
No worries, I won't quit my day job and try to
make a living making perfect fish templates.
My family would starve. 

Materials:

7 foam sheets
Googly eyes (2 for each fish)
Letter stickers
Large piece of paper

Wooden spool
Wooden dowel or rod
String/Jute
Magnets (1 for each fish, 1 large one with a hole in the middle as a "hook")
Hot glue sticks

Tools:

Hot glue gun
Scissors

Blue Crayon

I went through all of my different letter stickers
and located two N, I, K, O, L, A and S's.
What's that spell?!

Nikolas!
Front and back.

A little name fun.

I free-handed a pond as well and colored it

When the hubs heard I was making a fishing pole he insisted it be functional (which didn't turn out, unfortunately).
And that the fishing pole part be left up to a professional.
A professional fake-fishing-pole-maker, and he wanted the job.

The hubs hot glued a wooden spool and string to a
fishing pole to create the appearance of functionality.

A magnet was tied to the end of the string.

And of course I added some jute over the
hot glued spots to make it look neater.

We set the pond and fish at the bottom
of a staircase and handed Pickles the fishing pole.
He was so excited!

The cat started taking serious interest in our fishing game.
This just expanded Niks fun. 

Trying to catch the fish was fun enough,
but trying to catch fish during an enemy attack
is even more super awesome fun.

The fishing continued for over an hour.
Nik loved catching a fish and announcing the letter on each one.

This craft goes in the major success pile as
there were serious giggles and laughs.

This project is fun even without a cat of your own.
Try it!