Fishy Play

I saw the lovely counting felt fish at Counting Coconuts and knew MD would just love them.  He is really into fish and fishing right now for reasons I don't understand because we don't go fishing.  However, I can't sew to save my life, do not own a sewing machine, and am really busy right now, so I didn't think of making these fishies. 

Then one day recently, I remembered that I made MD a Halloween bag 2 years ago and made a firetruck design out of felt to go with his fireman costume.  I remembered I still had some felt glue leftover, and thought, what if I just cut out a few fish shapes, put a magnet inside, and glue them together.  Won't look as cute but will serve the purpose.  I added some buttons for eyes and puffy fabric paint for designs.

I also remembered that I had an extra rod that broke from my bamboo kitchen blinds and I decided to use this as the fishing pole to avoid a trip to the store for a dowell. 

MD loved it!  He had fun fishing and also fished a few magnetic letters.  It was a little tricky to get the "fishing pole" magnet in the right area of the magnet inside the fishes though.  I didn't realize until I went back to read the post on Counting Coconuts that she used a washer on the fishes mouth to attach to the magnet.  I also had forgotten that they were "counting fish" and did not add that part.   Oh well, this was still a lot easier than I thought and a lot of fun.  (Thanks for the inspiration Mari Ann!)

Oh yeah, and we also made this "fancy" diaper box boat . . .