Fishing

This time we'll get the trash out

There was clean water on one side and dirty water on the other, and they went back and forth looking at them.

“This one is dirty.”

“The fish couldn't live in there.”

With the rods they had made themselves, they moved the fish across.

“I'll rescue this fish.”

“I did two.”

“I want to help more.”

They counted the fish that made it over — one, two, three — and looked at them all sitting in the clean water.

“Now they can live.”

Later they came back to it.

“This time we'll get the trash out too.”

“We have to make the sea clean.”

They sorted what they hooked as it came up.

“This one is plastic.”

“This one is a bottle.”

“Whoa, you got it!”

They put it all in the trash can.

“The sea is clean now.”

Feeding the cats

Out of nowhere some of them started making cat noises.

The others took the fish they had hooked and carried them over to the ones being cats, and fed them.

Then they swapped, and did it again.

It was being the cat and getting the fish that they wanted, more than the fishing.

The whole playground was the sea

They had been talking and writing about what lives in the sea.

“How do you write whale?”

“Write sea creature stories, please.”

Then they went outside, and the fishing came with them. Out there they made the whole playground the sea, and the climbing frame a boat, and fished from it.

More of them joined in as the space got bigger.

Shall we sit down to fish?

The ice fishing had been going for days.

“Shall we sit on chairs to fish?”

They built themselves chairs out of the blocks, and the others built their own, each one different.

Sitting down, they fished, and counted the smelt they got, and compared.

Then play money came in and it turned into a restaurant.

Afterward they talked about how it had gone.

“It was even more fun than I thought.”

“I want to go sledding on the ice too.”

“We should skate.”

Crab soup, bubbling away

They were catching fish and letting them go again, over and over.

An adult asked one of them, who had a crab:

“I really like crab soup. How about making some good crab soup with that?”

The others wanted in. They carried the crabs they had caught over to the kitchen, put them in bowls, and cooked.

“Crab soup, bubbling away.”

They handed it over. Then somebody used the octopus they had made together.

“This is octopus soup!”

This is the long kind of fishing

They were in the play room, making rods out of the big blocks — a long foam pole with connecting blocks on it.

“This is the long kind of fishing.”

They showed each other what they had made, then went after the blocks with the rods, and built the water out of blocks to fish in.

The paper they tore

They stacked cardboard bricks and laid blue plastic sheeting inside them, and that was the sea, and the toy fish went in.

One of them started tearing up paper to feed the fish. The others saw it and started tearing paper too, and it piled up on the sheeting.

Some of them didn't like it and said so, but the tearing carried on, and it turned into a fight.

An adult suggested cleaning the sea instead. So they picked the paper up and it became a game of sorting it into recycling.

Then they talked about wanting to keep the sea clean, and about the ways to do it. An adult wrote down what they said and they drew on it and made signs out of it, and went round telling the others.

Sushi, and then the fish ran out

The smelt fishing spot was ready when they came in. They lifted the fish out with magnetic rods and counted them.

Then one of them picked a fish up.

“I should grill this.”

They built a frame out of paper blocks, put red circles inside it for the fire, laid a puzzle board over the top, and put the fish on it to grill.

The others started cooking too — one putting fish into a blender, one setting them in a bowl with wooden blocks, one grilling them on the fire they had made.

“Sushi! Get your sushi!”

An adult said sushi sounded good, so they pulled the fish back out of the cooking and started making it.

Soon the table was covered — sushi, and fruit, and popcorn from the play kitchen — and they ate it together.

“That's good.”

“This one is cold!”

“Sweet.”

The ones who still wanted to fish found the ice box nearly empty, so they went to the cooks to borrow some fish back. They were turned down. They fished with what was left, and agreed to do more of it tomorrow.

Turning the pool into a fishing spot

They decided to turn the pool they had been playing in into a fishing spot, and talked through what it would need.

They picked out the sea creatures they wanted, cut them out, stuck them together with stuffing inside, and made them squishy.

Then they put the finished ones into the pool and it stood as it was, and they put their hands into the pool and played with the creatures in there.

Time out, and then a rule

A child held up the toy fish to two others.

“Do you remember, we did this ages ago?”

“That's the fishing game.”

“I remember. We did it when we were six.”

“Let's build a fishing spot!”

Another came over.

“Can I play?”

“We're making a fishing spot. These are the fish and we're going to catch them.”

“I want to play too.”

“Go on then.”

Two of them fetched paper blocks and started building.

“Hang on, though — if we build it like this, how is it a fishing spot?”

One of them pointed at a side.

“Because the fish will all get out that way?”

“Yeah.”

The building carried on.

“Wait! Time out.”

They stopped.

“How about the seven-year-olds make the shape and the six-year-olds stack on top like this?”

“Okay.”

The older ones laid the shape and the younger ones built it up.

“It's a fish-shaped fishing spot.”

“Now let's put the fish in.”

Two more came over wanting to play.

“But there are only two rods.”

“Then we do teams!”

They picked the teams with a counting game.

“Rule time! It's over when all the fish are caught!”

“Rule time! No catching two at once!”

Then it started.

“Come on, you can do it!”

When one of them landed a fish:

“Put it in here! And give the rod to him!”

The rod went across, and the next one fished.

So where are we fishing?

The fishing had been going since the last time.

“It's the sea.”

“It's a river.”

“It's a pond.”

The fish they were catching all live in the sea, they worked out.

“So where are we fishing?”

The sea, they agreed. Then they went at what it takes to fish in the sea.

“You have to go in a boat.”

“You could fish off a rock.”

“You could fish from the sand.”

They turned a table over for the boat and picked out the bricks with stone markings on them for the rock, and fished from the boat and from the rock.

The fish they caught went over to the kitchen and onto a grill.

Aprons and chef's hats went on, and a restaurant opened.

“Make it taste good, please.”

More of them kept coming to eat, so they pushed tables into a long line to make more room, and worked out who would cook, who would take the orders, who would carry the food, who would wash up.