How can five little fish be so cute with those big black eyes looking up at you from the lily pads? Kids couldn’t wait to flip a lily pad card that had a fish on it so they could go fishing with the rod. Hook a fish, lift it up and its tail cascades out the bottom, revealing its color–red, purple, green, yellow or blue. When the color of the fish on your lily pad card matches your caught fish you place the fish in front of you and play moves on. When a player turns over a lily pad and sees a rainbow fish, he drags any fish to a spot in front of him, not revealing the color. This fun game of color recognition, matching and memory makes learning fun as kids occasionally “advise” one another as only preschoolers can. Visual memory, a skill used in reading, is tapped as kids have to pay attention and recall where a fish of a certain color is for a match. A little deductive reasoning is employed too as they narrow down the options for guessing a fish that hasn’t been revealed. As any seasoned fisherman knows, the one who comes home with the most fish wins!

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