It’s been so fun realizing that the Harry Potter books are all about family history! And incorporating them into your family makes fun memories!
Decorating for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets:
Making memories with Harry Potter book 2, the Chamber of Secrets, began by adding more decorations to our dinner table. Owls and platform 9 ¾! (all my spiders were in storage😉 and I refuse to use snakes, eek! Although a large one wrapped around the dinner table would have been cool!) Once again, I just used what I had in the house which meant orange and green balloon owls and a solid red tablecloth for the train station platform 9 ¾. I used to think everything had to be perfect and grand. (I still like it that way, but when you are limited on resources, and time, LOL, it’s better to create the memories than not do it because it’s not Home and Gardens front cover worthy!) No matter what you do, it will be fun and memorable. As we continued to add to our decorations, the dining room became more festive!
The kids added Hogwarts crest of arms, and each took a test to discover their wand. Wizarding World of Harry Potter. The children helped with the decorating, making their own wands, and asked if they could help make dinner too. Win, win!
Our Harry Potter Dinner menu:
Tonight was pumpkin juice! So, I tried 2 different recipes for taste testing. The kids definitely had a favorite. (Besides the Harry Potter Un-official Cookbook, we used the “Wizard’s cookbook” by Aurelia Beaupommier) The Shepard’s pie was such a hit that they have asked to have it become part of our dinner rotation in the future! I even used frosting tips to pipe the mashed potatoes! That was an adventure. And the salad was ALL me…apparently Hogwarts elves don’t believe in eating healthy greens! Haha. Couldn’t find a reference or recipe for a salad.
Family History Activities:
Making memories with Harry Potter book 2 was talking about books. We discussed that some books and movies can be dangerous, like what Jenny Weasley discovered. However, we also know that some books can be awesome! Especially when they are filled with family stories! You could read out-loud during dinner a short story about an ancestor you previously read about on FamilySearch.
Or after dinner decorate a journal and have your family write their own story about Coronavirus and how it’s affected them this year.
Or, have family choose one of their favorite books and read it out loud. Our family loves children’s picture books, and by reading one of these children’s books, I would hope that they would be reminded of childhood days when I used to read to them daily. Or even read the first chapter of the “Chamber of Secrets” to see and feel the difference between reading a book and watching a movie.
My last idea is to brainstorm as a family, a list of family favorite memories (maybe record the family as they tell or remember these stories with your phone). Add some special foods your family likes and why, and maybe a list of objects in your home that have special meaning and why. You could even have the kids run around and take a few photos of those objects. That would be it for the activity. But like my mom, you could use these stories and recipes and pictures of objects and turn them into a book called “Robinson Family Stories” part 1 and give it at Christmas time this year. Don’t worry about making sure you have every story. Some is better to have some, than none, and since it’s a part 1, someday way in the future you could do a part 2 and put other stories you forgot about or new stories you can add to that book. (Below see a few pictures of the book my mother created.) My mother included the stories of the birth’s of her children, she included family recipes, poems family wrote, silly one-liners family said, and clarified that over the years you forget some details and remember stories different, so forgive her. It’s a treasure to have these stories complied.
Getting kids involved with decorating and cooking can be done with other family favorite books too. You never know, “Cloudy with a chance of meatballs,” could become part of your family dinner rotation in the future!! 😊
Make a memory this week! Family History with Harry Potter are reposted and updated from an Instagram and Facebook posting in March of 2020. #foreverfamilytrees #harrypotter #makeamemory #pumpkinjuice #harrypottercookbook #familyhistory
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