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Hooray for Fish

Lucy Cousins
Walker Books
Age 0-3 years

In this bright colourful board book little fish introduces us to his under-sea world. We meet an amazing array of fish with many different colours, shapes and patterns. The rhythm, repetition, rhyme and word play make this great fun to share again and again.

 

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Share the story

Read aloud
Point out little fish on the cover and as you open the book.  as you read the book aloud allow time for children to look at the pictures and touch the book if they want to.

The end of the book is the perfect time for a kiss, kiss, kiss like mum and baby fish. 


Join in
Encourage children to use their finger to twist and twirl or go round and round as you share the book again. When children are familiar with the book, they might begin to join in with the responses eg if you read ‘hairy fish’ and leave a gap and they may reply ‘scary fish’.


Talk about the book

  • See if you can find little fish on the different pages of the book

  • Look at the big picture of all the fish at the back of the book, spot some of the different fish together.

  • Count the one, two, three fish

  • Talk about colours eg of the red, blue, yellow fish


Watch the story

Hooray for Fish! by Lucy Cousins from Candlewick Press on Vimeo. 

Amy shared Hooray for fish with Joshua who is 17 months.

Joshua likes the book and even asked for it today by doing fish noises! He seems to prefer his dad reading it. But he seems to prefer his dad fullstop at the moment.

This book is very good for practising some easy words, numbers, colours etc and it has  lovely colourful pages. I really like it! 

The only thing we haven't managed is to finish the whole book - his attention span doesn't quite get that far! 

Things to make and do

Make a fish puppet
Trace, photocopy or draw a fish from the book onto card. Cut out and stick onto a stick (gardening sticks are perfect for this). Your child could hold it when you share the story.

Play with water
If you have toy fish you could play with them in the bath or a paddling pool and repeat lines from the story as you do.

Draw in shaving foam
Use a small tray and squirt with enough shaving foam to cover the base. Show your child how to draw lines going round and round or make curly-whirly or twisty-twirly shapes

Paint a fish
With some bright paint draw a big fish shape and show your child how to create spots or stripes then let them have a go – it doesn’t matter if the picture gets a bit mess, you can cut out the fish and stick it onto another piece of paper.

Say a fishy rhyme/sing a fishy song
For example:

One two three for five once I caught a fish alive

six seven eight nine ten then I let him go again

Why did you let him go because he bit my finger so which finger did he bite this little finger on the right.

Find more here

 

Find out more

Visit an aquarium or a pet shop which sells tropical fish.

Read more books about fish
This is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

Please Mr Magic Fish by Jessica Souhami 

Visit author Lucy Cousins’ website here

Read more books by Lucy Cousins
Titles include:

Where is Little Fish?

Peck, Peck, Peck 

A Busy Day for Birds

Maisie Goes to Bed

Maisie Goes to the Library