Lego Harry Potter (image: shop.lego.com)
Being a family of five, with three young children can make playtime a little fraught. There are moments when we all manage to sit down together to play something, but more often than not the kids all want to do something different. My daughter always opts for something less electronic while the boys are still in the DS-obsessed phase.
But the other day I came up with a cross over activity that keeps us all playing and talking about the same game world. It all stems from the recent influx of Harry Potter games — our kids are just reading the books and really loving them.
LEGO Harry Potter Years 1-4 DS
It was the discovery that there is both a real Harry Potter board game as well as the Lego Harry Potter DS games that game me the idea. As a reward for their (reasonably) good behavior over the school holidays I came home one day with three mysterious boxes.
I got the kids into the dining room and sat them all down before handing out their gifts. Harry Potter Hogwarts board game for my daughter, Lego Harry Potter DS game for the boys.
Whereas these sort of gifts usually end up with one or other of them wanting what they haven’t got, it seemed that with the shared theme they were happy with their lot. They also seemed happy to swap over now and again which was a miracle.
We spent a good few hours that rainy Sunday playing with the various Harry Potter Lego toys and talking about our favorite moments with the books. I know it wasn’t the cheapest way to spend an afternoon, but for us I think the expense was worth it.
It’s a few weeks later now and the kids are back at school and they are still enjoying their toys and have started re-reading the books – as well as inventing a whole host of Harry Potter Hogwarts board game variants of their own.
