Hellobee

Last time I wrote about how I was trying to bring literature to life for my kids. I really wanted to cement a love of reading by showing them how exciting new stories and characters can be. Although I was an adult when these books were written, I couldn’t help but fall in love with them. I know that I am not alone in my love for this series, which changed the whole genre of young adult fiction. The first time I read a Harry Potter book I was in college and a friend of mine told me she knew it was a kid’s book, but I should give it a try. By then three books had come out. Once I started I couldn’t stop and I eagerly awaited the release of each of the following books. When my kids were born I knew some day we would read these books together.

I tried to build up some suspense and anticipation by telling them about the books and how both Mr. Train and I love them (seriously, each time the books came out we had to buy two because neither wanted to wait for the other to finish). What really kicked their curiosity up a notch was some friends of ours had already seen several of the movies. They came over and wanted to play wizards and witches and my kids were so jealous that they hadn’t seen the movie. I told them they had to read the book with me before they were allowed to see the movie. It was met with some whining of course because our friends hadn’t read the books, but they eventually understood that it was my rule: book then movie. This was a little hard on me as well because I really wanted to let them watch the movie. I knew they would love it as soon as it started (does anyone else get excited when they hear the theme song even when it’s just the Warner Brothers sign on the screen?)

So once their curiosity was piqued we began the long process of reading the book. It was the longest chapter book we had read so far. And let’s face it — sometimes five year olds are just not interested in sitting for very long for story time. It took us about a month and each time we had to do a quick recap. I really enjoyed every minute of reading it with them. As they got caught up in the story I couldn’t help but laugh to myself knowing about the surprise ending. We finally fished the book on a Sunday night after reading for over an hour (they would not let me stop reading once we got to the last few chapters), and they immediately wanted to watch the movie. They were a bit disappointed when I told them it had to be a Saturday night movie night which was almost an entire week away. Oh well, being patient builds character right?

It also gave me some time to make our plans for our Harry Potter Movie night. Unfortunately our family, including me, spent the entire week being sick. Come Saturday we were still under the weather so we decided to have an at home Harry Potter Sick Day since we didn’t really want to spread our germs by going somewhere. Friday night I threw a few things together and we had a marvelous day.

When the kids woke up they of course reminded me that it was Saturday and Harry Potter day. They were very surprised when I told them there was something waiting for them in the mailbox. They rushed out to find their very own Hogwarts letters. It was fairly simple to do — I just took the text from the letter in the book and printed it out in a fancy font. On the back it told them they must head to Diagon Alley to get their school supplies

Hogwarts letter and Train ticket

We took our lists and headed over to my parents’ house (next door). First stop was Gringott’s Bank where I counted out some gold, silver and bronze coins for each of them. Then we gathered up the supplies on our list. I had some green cauldrons that were left over St. Patrick ’s Day decorations. We brought over our old capes and wizard hats from our dress ups. I also let them pick an animal friend like Hedwig. We had some chopsticks which would be made into wands later. I also printed out Hogwarts express tickets and we pretended to hop on the train to Hogwarts. I am pretty sure we looked a little crazy dressed like wizards running around our front yard yelling “Choo Choo.”

Ready for Hogwarts

Our big project for the day was creating our wands. My kids love art projects and opportunities to be creative. This is a pretty easy project, but it does take grown up participation as it uses a hot glue gun. We started out with chopsticks and then I let the kids raid my craft supplies for beads and trinkets. I glued the beads on the wider end of the chopstick to make a handle and then made other designs for them with the glue. After all the glue was dry we painted them brown, gold and black to look like they were carved out of wood. Nick wanted to keep his with the colored beads showing so his is a little more colorful than the others. I think if I did these again I would try to get a sealant because some of the paint scratched off from our repetitive spell casting.

Making our very own Wizard wands.

The final product.

Throughout the rest of the day we were working on cooking things for dinner and dessert. I got a bunch of recipes from recipe party. It also happened to be my dad’s birthday so we splurged a little on the number of recipes we tried out. My dad always wants a pot roast and yorkshire pudding so that worked out well since it’s a British recipe. To make it more like a meal at Hogwarts, we added in some pumpkin juice, which was an interesting and very filling juice. 3 out of the 4 kids said they liked it so that’s not too bad.

The kids and I spent most of our time creating the desserts. We made pumpkin pastries, a treacle tart, and chocolate frogs and butter beer. That in addition to the Bertie Bott’s Every Flavored Beans, and we had some very full tummies. In fact everyone saved their chocolate frogs for the next day. I think the biggest hit was the beans. The kids thought it was hilarious to try all the different flavors. If anyone is up for trying these candies, I would recommend getting yourself a bag of good tasting beans to counteract the ones flavored like rotten egg, earthworm and vomit. Plus when the kids want you to try a bean you can always pretend to eat a bugger flavored one but really grab for a pear without them knowing.

Harry Potter desserts

This is the face of some one who was expecting buttered popcorn but got a rotten egg jelly bean

Then of course after all the excitement it was time for the movie to finally start. I have never seen my kids watch a movie as intensely as they watched this movie. It is over two hours long and all four of my kids sat there staring the entire time. I was a little worried about the scarier scenes, but our kids seemed to handle it fine. James said Voldemort’s face was kind of gross and that it was weird it was attached to someone else, and that was it. Harry Potter has been alive at our house for at least a month now and I love it. We are enjoying this first movie and I am going to wait a while before we move onto the second book. I’m thinking we might start in the summer so we can prepare for Halloween. I bet you can’t guess what my kids want to be this year. I guess I need to get started on my Molly Weasley costume.