Here, Fishy Fishy

Before the summer holidays some members expressed an interest in some reviews of games from Haba’s ‘My Very First Games’ series. I’ve finally found some time to do this! My goal is to give a brief summary of the game, suggest what skills I think are necessary for a child to engage with the game, and finally discuss what we think and if my little one enjoys it.

So, here is my review of ‘Here, Fishy Fishy’ by Haba.

In the game, the first stage is to roll a die. Depending on which colour you roll, you then use the fishing pole to pick up that fish. There are 6 large wooden fish with a magnet inside, and a fishing pole with a magnet at the end. So when you touch the end of the fishing pole on a fish it will pick it up (this is great just as an activity, outside of the actual game).

Once you have caught the fish, you then pick up a piece of the matching colour and insert it into your board (like a toddler puzzle). There are 5 different pieces to put into your board – the sixth fish is silver and acts as a wild fish, letting you pick any colour piece that you are missing. The winner is the first player to put all five pieces into their board.

We started playing this game with my daughter when she was around 18 months, she’s now almost 22 months and fully understands this concept, and can correctly choose what colour pieces she is missing when she rolls the wild fish. In fact, we actually have a problem with her refusing to roll the die properly and just turning it to whatever colour she needs…

To play this game some knowledge of colours would be helpful – the ablity to match colours probably essential (although obviously an adult can help). The trickiest bit is putting the pieces into the board – there’s no colour guidance on the board to help little ones work out what space to put in a piece in, and the lack of symmetry means that they have to be lined up perfectly to go in. My daughter really struggled with this at first and would get very frustrated, but a few months of practise and she can do this easily now.

Overall we have really enjoyed this game – it’s known in our house as the ‘fishing game’, and my daughter asks to play it daily. It’s really been a great introduction to a board game for her, with the ideas of turn taking, playing by specific rules, and linking together different objects (the die roll, to the fish, to the board pieces). It’s even introduced her to some very light decision making in deciding what colour piece to get with the wild fish.

I would definitely recommend this if you’re looking for a game to play with very small children. The game is completely language independent, and the instructions booklet is printed in multiple languages anyway, so picking up a second copy in another language should be fine (and easier to find than English language copies in my experience).

*Definitely for very little kids but they will likely grow out of it quickly.