Episode Three - Magnet Fishing Game

Introduction

Building skills in tactile discrimination follows a progression of learning from exploring real objects to eventually reading braille. In this magnet fishing activity, children explore the contours of embossed shapes. Note that the shapes are filled in - we start with full shapes and eventually move to tracing and discriminating shapes made of raised lines! 

This episode can be viewed in the video player above and is also posted on the PRCVI YouTube channel where you will find links to other resources as well as the comments thread for this video.

Linked here is a PDF version of the Magnet Fishing Activity recipe. 

Key ingredients

  • A bucket
  • Rigid plastic tubing (45 to 50 cm)
  • Shoelace (45 to 50 cm)
  • Robust magnet
  • 12 recipe cards
  • Foam stickers or other tactile markers
  • Jumbo sized paperclips

Mixing it together

  • Build your fishing pole: tie the shoelace to one end of the plastic tubing; tie the other end of the shoelace to the magnet.
  • Create pairs of matching tactile recipe cards: clip the top right corner of 12 recipe cards:
    • Make 6 pairs of cards, each pair has a different tactile shape in the centre of the card: square, circle, triangle, star, star/square, circle/triangle.
  • Put an extra large paperclip onto the left end of each card.

Topping off the recipe

  • Put a pair of cards, along with a single card from a different pair, into the bucket.
  • Help your child to go fishing in the bucket to catch all 3 cards. Pull up the rod and remove the fish cards from the magnet.
  • Lay the cards on a flat solid surface, make sure the clipped corner is in the upper right, and have your child to find the 2 shapes that are the same and the different shape. Talk about how some shapes have straight edges or rounded edges, corners, and points.
  • Make more complex card pairs by using more than one shape on a card. For example: square-circle-square, circle-circle-star, or triangle-square-circle. Help your child to find the matching pair patterns when they go fishing.
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