The very first thing I did was jump onto Canva and create a printable sheet that we could use to log our progress. I scrolled WAY BACK through my instagram posts until I found the bingo card that Cait posted back in the day. I used most of her ideas and then my kids and I brainstormed a few substitutions.

Our family chose to complete this challenge by starting at the first square and progressing to the right and down like you read a book, but you could also choose boxes randomly. We did miss probably 3 or four days and made them up on days that we were less busy. At this stage of life, we have to be flexible and take wins where we can get them.

You can see below what we came up with and download it for free to use with your own family at the bottom of this post. We used the version on top that has a light blue background, but since that might be more ink than some families want to use, I also made an alternate with a white background that is a little more printer friendly.

For the most part, we used board games for this challenge as our family owns quite a large number of games. (It’s almost embarrassing.) However, we did not ONLY use board games. We played charades for the parlour game and 20 questions for the car game. For the movement game, we played something my kids call werewolf, which is basically a reverse tag game where all the players search for the tagger then yell “werewolf!” and run back to safe when they find them. I wish I’d written down all games we played, but it’s taken me a couple months to get this post up, so it’s a bit of a blur.

Did the games always end happily? Absolutely not. We have 6 people in our family so feelings quite often get hurt. However, this happens far less often than when my kids were young. Another advantage to doing this game challenge with older kids is that this is the first time we’ve ever done this where everyone in our family is solid at reading. That really opens up what we are able to play. I plan to fill this out more in the future, but feel free to check out my Amazon storefront if you are looking for game recommendations!

Our favorites do change somewhat frequently, but here are some of our favorites that have stood the test of time, in no particular order:

One Night Ultimate Werewolf
Dixit
Not Parent Approved
Skyjo
Forbidden Island

Recommended Age Range: All ages
Time Required: ~10-30 minutes per day (or longer, totally up to you!)
Difficulty: Medium (it does take some planning)
Cost: Free printable

*** Download your free printable here: Family Game Challenge ***

I hope your family enjoys this challenge and that it brings you all a little closer together!

Related Links

Homemade Fum for Kids
Tabletop Gaming for Kids
Learning Activities for Kids

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When my kids were young, we held themed parties with friends more regularly. (For example, see this Gold Rush party or this Soap Sculpture activity that was part of a Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler book club. (In a bizarre coincidence, my family came home from skiing/snowboarding just this morning to find our dog had eaten half a bar of Ivory soap, which happens to the be last remaining bar from the set purchased for this activity all those years ago. I don’t even know where she found it.) What with pandemics and busy lives and growing kids, the number of themed parties we’ve thrown has diminished considerably over the years. Then, suddenly, a few weeks ago, I realized that these Winter Olympics would be the last of my oldest’s childhood. He’s currently 16. The next summer ones will be his senior year of high school. I couldn’t let an opportunity like this pass us by. My kids and I got to work.

Winter Olympics Menu

The easiest place to start was with a menu. My teenage daughter knows how to use Pinterest and we all have a pretty good imaginations. This is what we came up with.

We got the idea to use ice cream cones as Olympic torches off of Pinterest, though the ones my daughter found were filled with fruit. I’m sure orange sherbert combined with Cheetoes has been done by someone somewhere as it seemed the obvious filling choice to my ice cream and chip obsessed crew. I think it really was what made our party the most memorable as half of our guests were fully on board and the other half were completely disgusted.

The next big centerpiece was the fruit, which was a lovely and appreciated contribution from a friend.

My daughter found on Pinterest others who called their bottled water melted snow and we loved it.

My 13 year old daughter made these Olympic cupcakes and my 9 year old sun helped with the sorting of mini M&Ms into colored bowls to make it easier for her.

I really wanted the kids to have some actual nutrition and not fill up on dessert, so I made some peanut butter balls that I regularly make and covered them in powder sugar. The recipe is 2 cups oats, 1 cup peanut butter, 1/2 cup chocolate chips and a generous drizzle of maple syrup (maybe 1/4 cup, but I don’t measure).

I had initially thought I would make snowball cookies, but I think these peanut butter snowballs turned out better. They definitely all disappeared.

My daughter, who loves caprese salad, found some mozzarella snowmen on Pinterest and we improvised. These did not seem as popular with the kids, but were a nice adult-ish touch.

At the grocery store, my kids had the idea of calling yellow oreos, gold medal oreos, and we knew we wanted pretzels, so we got straight ones and called them ski pole pretzels.

Since we were messing with semantics to eat what we wanted, we also got popcorn and called them snowflakes.

Winter Olympics Decorations

Our primary decorations were banners that we made using folded over pieces of paper that have flags on one side and the country name on the other.

If you’d like to use these, you can download this Flags of the World printable file I created here. I may add more countries to it the next time when we do the Summer Olympics, but this time, we used 24 countries and strung them across our kitchen and in our living room window. Here is a pictures of our soap-eating dog waiting for guests to arrive.

The only other decoration we made was a banner to welcome our guests. I tried to get my kids to help me on this, but all they really did was offer suggestions for what to put. It turns out as they get older, they get more self conscious about their artistic creations.

Winter Olympics Activities

The primary activity was that we had the Opening Ceremonies playing during the entire party and watched a few key moments, namely the first 15 minutes, the beginning of the Parade of Nations, when the United States entered, and the passing of the torch and lighting of the cauldron near the end. The fact that opening ceremonies occured during a time when kids normally come over to my house anyway for a weekly chess club was a big factor spurring this party. However, I don’t think watching opening ceremonies is crucial. In the future, if the opening ceremonies are not at a convenient date and time, highlights could be watched or skipped entirely.

The part of an Olympics party that I don’t think you can do without is a little competition. At our party, we had the following “Olympic games.”

1. Trivia (I’ll provide some suggested questions below)
2. Foot race (out in the street, maybe 50 meters)
3. Standing broad jump (be sure you have some sidewalk chalk)
4. Cornhole (everyone got 3 beanbag throws. A different parent ran it, but I know they got 1 point for every beanbag that stayed on the board. I think 3 points were for touching the hole and 5 were for making it through, but I could have this off a bit. I don’t think it matters as long as the scoring is clearly laid out ahead of time.)
5. Jump rope (just the maximum number of jumps before messing up)
6. Rock Paper Scissors (my 16 year old organized a full single elimination bracket with each individual competition being best 2 out of 3).

I believe those were all the competitions that actually happened, though we had a few other ideas that we would have done if time allowed. The one that I was most hoping would happen was a talent show where a set of judges would get to write a score on one of the 5 mini white boards that I own. The kids were excited to do this, but it just felt overly ambitious to try to squeeze in near the end of the party and by that time, a giant, spontaneous game of tag had broken out.

The whole party lasted 3 hours, but the first 30 minutes were eating snacks and watching opening ceremonies and the last 30 minutes were mostly just tag and hanging out. The 2 hours in the middle that it took to do the competitions with short breaks in between felt more than sufficient. We had about 20 kids total between the ages of 3 and 16.

To honor the winners, I actually used my Cricut to print and cut circle stickers for the gold, silver, and bronze medals. I also used my Cricut to partially cut cardboard circles out of an Amazon box, but my daughter helped with a lot of that final cutting since the Cricut couldn’t go all the way through. She also affixed the stickers to the cardboard circles. To give credit where credit is due, my boys played a big part in cutting and attaching the ribbon to the medals.

In the end, I made 15 each of gold, silver, and bronze medals and then an extra 9 gold medals so that anyone who didn’t win could have a gold to take home as a souvenir. Some competitions, like the running, jumping, cornhole, and jump roping, had 3 age divisions so we needed 9 medals total for each of those competitions. The trivia and the rock-paper-scissors tournament had everyone competing in the same group, so there were only 3 each for each of those. All in all, we made 45 medals and used 42, plus we had the extra golds which came in handy, particularly for the youngest participants who sometimes had mishaps, like shoes falling off in the middle of races.

Here is the Canva Olympic Medal for Party file I created, in case you would like to modify it for your own purposes. I don’t normally share Canva files, so if you try this and have any issues, just reach out! You will obviously have to change the word on top since you probably don’t live in my city and will likely need to change the year as well since I’m so delinquent in getting this post out.

Olympics Trivia

In case it is helpful, here are the questions I asked for my Olympics Trivia competition. I’ll put the answers, though not all of these will be accurate next time.

1. In what country did the Ancient Olympics originate? (Greece)
2. In what country are the Olympics currently being held? (Italy)
3. How often are the Winter Olympics held? (every 4 years)
4. What did the first Olympians wear during the Ancient Olympic games? (nothing, they were nude)
5. What color is associated with third place? (bronze)
6. What do the 5 Olympic rings represent? (regions of the world – Europe, Asia, Africa, Americas, Australia)
7. Where will the Summer Olympics be held in 2028? (Los Angeles. A good number knew this since we live near LA are are excited.)

I passed out small pieces of papers and pencils. We did the quiz as a group, then we collected pencils and went over the answers as a group.

Since we had a tie for who knew the most, as I suspected we would, I came up with a few tie breaker questions.

1. In what city in Greece was the first modern Olympics held in 1896? (Athens)
2. What continent has particpated in, but never hosted the Olympic games? (Africa)
3. In Ancient Greece, winners did not get gold, silver, and bronze medals? What did they get instead? (laurel wreaths)
4. What country has hosted the Olympics the most times? (United States)
5. The motto of the Olympics is, in latin, “citius, altius, fortius.” What does this mean in English? (faster, higher, stronger)

We did not need to use them all, but it was helpful to have a few options just in case.

After Party

Don’t forget to actually WATCH some of the Olympics after your party. The best way to do this I’ve found is to download the Olympics app on your phone. I was able to tell it which athletes and sports we were most interested in and I would get notifications on my phone that helped us watch a few medaling events live.

One other thing we decided to do was have a movie night, just as a family, to celebrate our Olympics-themed day. Personally, we chose to watch Cool Runnings, but The Cutting Edge and Miracle might also be good choices depending on what your family enjoys and has already seen.

And that’s a pretty thorough overview of our successful Winter Olympics party! If you decide to use some or all of these ideas, I hope you have a blast!

Related Links

History Activities for Kids
Social Science Activities for Kids
Robotics Activities for Kids

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Animal Adventures: RPG Starter Set Details

Product: Animal Adventures
Company: Steamforged Games
Website: https://steamforged.com/collections/animal-adventures
Recommended Age Range: Box says 14 and up. This seems a little ridiculous to me. I think that any child that can read has a decent shot of being able to solve some of these puzzles with adult help. We’ve done several of the puzzles, and I don’t believe there is any “adult” content that would prevent a child from participating. All of my kids, including my 9 year old, had a lot of fun with this.
Price Range: ~$30
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

Overall, I am really glad that we purchased this box set, as the instruction manual is of a reasonable length, the story line is fairly simple, the character sheets are cute and easy to understand, and my family had a lot of fun. I also really enjoyed that it came with a map and actual miniature figures that we could move around. I will say that my family did eventually give up on moving so many spaces per turn as is outlined in the instructions. I have enough experience attempting to be a game master for D&D that I now have confidence to just throw out the parts that are holding you up and move forward with what’s fun.

One issue I had when I first opened the box is that it comes with 7 character minatures and character sheets, but of those 4 were girls and 3 were boys. Since I have 2 younger boys who I didn’t think would want to play girl characters, the very first thing I did when I opened the box was laminate the character sheets, then use a sharpie to cover up the name and gender. I told each person in my family to pick a character and then give their character a name and gender. It might have been unnecessary, but this worked well for us.

My only other complaint with this game is that it that it can only be played once. Once you have worked your way through the campaign, it probably wouldn’t be very fun to do the same storyline again, at least with the same people. I feel like I’ve already missed the window with my teenagers, but I’m hoping that my younger two kids (9 and 11 years) will use what we did as inspiration to write their own campaigns. That has always been my goal…to plant the seeds in their heads to get them writing for fun.

I didn’t realize this until just now, but the company that makes this starter set has actually written other adventures. I just ordered this Gullet Cove sourcebook which sounds like it has “3 additional adventures.” It does also say it introduces new animal characters and monsters/villains, and I see that the company website sells additional minifigs, but I’m cheap, so I’ll see what I can make work using the ideas in the book without buying anything additional. I assume the book will not have a convenient map the way the starter set does.

Anyway, despite that diversion into other products produced by the same company, I can say with confidence that this Animal Adventures: RPG Starter Set comes with everything you will need for your first adventure. If you are already a fan of D&D and familiar with campaigns and the rules of D&D, this will probably not be extremely interesting to you, but if you are D&D curious and want to encourage imaginative play in your kids, this is a great place to start!

Click here for more Board Games Reviews for kids of all ages.

Related Links:

Best Gifts for Kids

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Sneaky Sabotage Details

Product: Sneaky Sabotage
Company: Finders Seekers
Website: https://sneakysabotage.com
Recommended Age Range: Box says 14 and up. What is it with these games? My 9 year old LOVED this.
Price Range: ~$30
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

My family LOVES Finders Seekers. (You can read my full review here.) I think it is such a great way to get kids exercising their brains and having fun at the the same time. When I started receiving promotional emails about their new game, Sneaky Sabotage, I ordered it right away even though 3 of my kids were not even in the recommended age range. I didn’t know exactly what we were getting, but I figured if it was too old, we would just save it until they were old enough. It turns out, it’s a lot of fun now.

This game is sort of a cross between the puzzles within the Finders Seekers boxes and the game One Night Ultimate Werewolf (which is another one of our family’s favorites — my review is here). In this game, the round starts with each player secretly choosing a character card. Most players will simply be “agents” who are trying to solve the puzzle and determine the secret code word. However, one person will be a “saboteur,” who is surreptitiously working AGAINST the team, trying to thwart their attempts at uncovering the secret word. An “insider” has some extra information that will help the team solve the puzzle, but they don’t want to give away their identity.

Just like in One Night Ultimate Werewolf, this game comes with audio that you need to play on a device. Unlike One Night Ultimate Werewolf, the game doesn’t have an app, simply a webpage that has different videos for you to select depending on the length of the puzzle. You can check those videos out here. At the beginning of each round, everone closes their eyes. The saboteur and the insider each open their eyes, one at a time, and read the clue on the back of the puzzle. Then, everyone opens their eyes and tries to solve the puzzle for the duration of the time. Could you play without the device? Yes, but it would be good to play with the videos first, so that the person leading the game knows what to say.

The puzzles themselves are of a decent difficulty level. They range from fairly easy to very difficult, but most of them are in a happy spot in the middle that require just enough out-of-the-box thinking to feel satisfying. The hints we’ve found to mostly be comically unhelpful, like “there is a hidden word,” but then some of the other ones are also maybe a little too helpful. It does not detract from the amount of fun we get from playing, but it does make it really hard to identify the insider, since the information they have is often either not very helpful or obvious.

We’ve had a lot of fun playing this game. My kids really enjoy the role playing aspect and are always hoping to be a sabateur. I really enjoy the puzzle solving and am always hoping to be an agent. The one time I was the saboteur, I saw the answer fairly quickly and then just had to subtly waste time for a few minutes. My daughter is the most obvious of sabateur’s asking us to look at skin irritations and using other obvious distraction techniques. While you might not expect it, somehow this game involves a lot of laughing, which is really my main goal when playing with my kids.

The only downside to this game is that there are a limited number of puzzles (only 24 that come in the box), so our specific family will only be able to work through each of those puzzles once, then we may pass it on to someone else. Each game has 4 rounds and so uses 4 puzzles by default, meaning we can play this game 6 times before we use up all the puzzles. Personally, I am hoping that the company comes out with inexpensive “expansion packs,” but even if not, I still feel like this game is well worth the value.

As someone who regularly buys Finder Seekers and other one-time boxed games like Hunt a Killer, I am no stranger to paying for an experience. It’s cheaper than taking my family of 6 to the movies! Just know that the replayability is limited. However, unlike the Finders Seekers boxes, the items within this game are not “used up” or damaged in any way, so you should have no problem passing it on to a new family when you are done.

Click here for more Board Games Reviews for kids of all ages.

Related Links:

Best Gifts for Kids

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Mysterium Details

Product: Mysterium
Company: Asmodee
Website: https://store.asmodee.com/products/mysterium
Recommended Age Range: Box says 10 and up. I think younger kids can play too since there isn’t any reading in the gameplay, but the directions are a bit complicated.
Price Range: ~$45
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

I’m going to start by saying that if you are easily overwhelmed by game directions and you haven’t played Dixit, play Dixit first. This game reminds us of Dixit which is one of our favorites, but Dixit is MUCH easier to learn how to play. If I hadn’t tried this game once before and given up, I probably wouldn’t have put in the 30 minutes or so it took to learn how to play this game. I was determined though. I watched a couple YouTube videos (I found this one them most helpful) and then it still took me like 15 to 20 minutes to set up the game the first time by looking at the directions.

The main premise is that there is a murder and one player is the ghost of the murder victim. The ghost has to send “visions” to the other players to help them figure out who the murderer is. The vision cards are a lot like the Dixit cards in that they are beautiful and totally random. The “ghost” has to make a connection between a random card and what they are trying to get you to notice and you have to just guess when connection they are making. For example, when I was the ghost, I was trying to direct my fifteen year old to a man who had half white hair and half black hair, so I was giving him vision after vision of black and white cards. He however, kept noticing different things about the subject of the cards and picked every character before the person I was directing him to.

Not only is this game really fun, but I feel like it is so good for kid’s creativity and flexible thinking skills. In a world where most video games and activities that kids participate in are very structured and cut and dry, it is so refreshing to be able to have fun in a way that encourages your brain to think divergently and make random associations. Now that we know how to play, I can definitely see this as one we will be playing for many years to come.

Click here for more Board Games Reviews for kids of all ages.

Related Links:

Best Gifts for Kids
Learning Activities for Kid

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Rack-O Details

Product: Rack-O
Company: Winning Moves Games (originally Milton Bradley)
Website: https://winning-moves.com/product/Rack-O.asp
Recommended Age Range: Box says 7 and up, but younger kids can play as well. They just might need someone to help them score at the end.
Price Range: ~$12
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

My biggest complaint about this game is that since I have four kids, I can’t play too. I really prefer games that allow up to 6 players, since that’s the size of my family, but we can’t always get what we want. Actually, if I really wanted to, I could buy a second box and then just double up and I think that would work great. The game is cheap enough, that it wouldn’t even be that expensive. I don’t think I will, mainly just because my game closet is already overflowing, but it’s nice to know that would work in case my kids ever developed a Rack-O obsession.

The premise is simple. You start with 10 cards in your rack in a random order. The cards have numbers between 1 and 60. Players take turns drawing cards and replacing cards in their rack until ALL of the cards are in order from smallest to largest. Then they yell Rack-O and are declared the winner. It literally takes about 2 minutes to learn and only about 15 minutes to play. Sometimes even just a few minutes if someone gets really lucky!

I think this is a great math game for kids who are learning to understand double digit numbers. Even if they were just working on their teens, you could remove all the numbers higher than 19 and tell the child you are only going to play with the first 5 slots instead of using all 10. This will allow children to understand concepts of greater than and less than in a fun, low pressure, motivating way. As they get better at this skill, you could gradually increase the number of cards and slots used until they can play the full game.

I also love that this game encourages critical thinking skills. There is an end goal of having your numbers in order from lowest to highest. The strategy for making this more likely to be possible probably won’t be obvious to all kids. As a tip, you can tell kids to try to make the card numbers closely match the numbers on the rack itself, because this will leave the cards fairly evenly spaced and prevent them from backing themselves into a corner. However, as they play more and get better, their intuition for good decisions will improve.

Click here for more Board Games Reviews for kids of all ages.

Related Links:

Best Gifts for Kids
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Best Books for Kids

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Finders Seekers Mystery Game Subscription Details

Product: Finders Seekers Mysetery Game Subscription
Company: Finders Seekers
Website: https://findersseekers.com/
Recommended Age Range: 10 and up
Price Range: ~$30 per month

Review

I am so impressed by the Finders Seekers games. They are definitely worth $30 in my opinion. We have done 3 boxes so far (random ones, not ones shipped consecutively), and I don’t think we’ve had a duplicate puzzle type. They don’t have a formula that they are following, such that these games get old. The people that are creating them must be so creative, because each of the three games was distinctly different. The first one we did had like a murder board where you had to eliminate suspects by gathering Guess Who style clues. The second one was solving a giant crossword puzzle using a journal and momentos that turned in to it’s own suprising clue. (I won’t give it away.) The last one we did used a Paris train map to gather clues that allowed you to complete a paint-by-number. Even the individual puzzles within the games don’t seem to repeat. I’m assuming they must at some point, but we haven’t gotten there yet!

All together, this game takes our family about 2 to 3 hours. There are typically about 10 to 12 individual puzzles that need to be solved, though unlike other escape rooms, such as the ones by ThinkFun, they do not need to be solved sequentially. Multiple people can be working on separate puzzles at the same time. While our 9 and 11 year old do not often solve puzzles on their own, they are frequently able to contribute in some way and our 11 year old has cracked a few.

The individual puzzles themselves are frequently based on creative concepts like menus, postcards, photographs, even a fortune cookie. Some of the games require the use of a device in some way, either to read a webpage or use a QR code, but for the most part, the screen aspect is small if present. All the boxes provide hints if you get stuck. Our family really tries hard not to use them, but we do still usually do at least one or two hints per box. Often they are things that I think, “yeah, I literally never would have thought of that,” but the hints have been sufficient for us to get the answer with just a little help. Tip: don’t forget to use EVERYTHING in your box. At first I thought they were sending us some novelty items like an apron, then realized they were actually clues too.

In terms of price, Finders Seekers boxes definitely beat in-person escape rooms and the Mail Order Mystery boxes. In-person escape rooms are arguably more fun, but they are typically shorter and cost a LOT more. We do them at most once a year due to price. Mail Order Mystery boxes are also nearly 3 times as expensive and not as great at promoting critical thinking as there is actually very little puzzle-solving. They may be a better choice for kids who are under the age of 8, but Finders Seekers actually makes a junior version of their boxes as well for kids under 10. Since all but one of our family members has aged out of this group, we haven’t tried the junior version, but if they are similarly designed, they are probably really great as well.

My 15 year old enjoys Finders Seekers as much as the rest of us, but has said that he still slightly prefers Hunt a Killer boxes. They are similarly priced and include similar material. Those take a bit longer, but then again, I don’t think we’ve ever used a Hunt a Killer hint, so maybe that’s why. Honestly though, I think the material is actually slightly better in Finders Seekers and they promise that their kits are always family-friendly (no murder or violence), which definitely can’t be said of Hunt-a-Killer. One disadvantage of Finders Seekers is that the kits can’t be reused. The clues are definitely meant to be destroyed as part of solving the puzzle (which honestly makes it a little more fun, in my opinion). When we’ve done Hunt a Killer and Think Fun escape room boxes, I’ve repackaged them when we’re done to pass on to other people. Not a deal breaker, but something to know.

One other slight disadvantage compared to Hunt a Killer is that Hunt a Killer feels more realistic. You are looking through evidence that really could be clues in order to put everything together. Finders Seekers is more like an in-person escape room in that you are solving a bunch of random puzzles to move closer to achieving your goal. They do a good job building each box around a theme, but you have to suspend disbelief to interpret any of these clues as “evidence.” No criminal is going to leave a trail like this for you to follow. This matters very little to me, as we have so much fun playing the game and solving their puzzles, but it’s just something else to be aware of.

One advantage of Finders Seekers, particularly if you have kids and even more so if you’re homeschooling, is that there is some educational value. It’s not a ton, but each box is tied to a place. So far we have done Prague, San Francisco, and Paris and we have learned a little about landmarks and the culture in each location by doing these boxes. It’s sort of like watching the Amazing Race (which our family also does and calls educational). What you learn of the place and culture is superficial, but in my mind, it is still valuable, because connections are being built in kids brains that they will be able to draw on in the future.

Related Links

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The Decorations

My first idea was that I would surprise them by decorating the house while they were sleeping. There were 5 components to my plan.

Balloons

You can tell this was a last minute decision, because I literally ordered these 1 week before the big day. I bought burgandy and gold balloons (affiliate links) and started filling them up as soon as my kids fell asleep. I’m not really big on balloons, but it was a special occasion.

I think I blew up about 20 of each, so I didn’t use the whole pack. If I remember correctly, I PLANNED to do them all, but my lungs couldn’t hack it. I tied them to a string and hung them from our ceiling and taped them in pair in various locations throughout our house.

In the picture below you can see I also got out some of our Harry Potter merchandise, like books and games.

Chalkboard Art

I AM a fan of chalkboard art. There are lots of great quotes, but this is the one I picked that fit the playful theme of the day.

Harry Potter Quotes

Speaking of quotes, this was EXTREMELY last minute, but I think around midnight, I decided to print out some of our favorite Harry Potter quotes and hang them around the house. I’m not entirely sure if this legal…I don’t want to violate copyright law. I’m not selling it, so hopefully it’s okay: You can download the quotes I used here. I just taped them all over the living room and kitchen.

Random Harry Potter Inpsired Art

This I definitely can’t share, but I was inspired by this Harry Potter Party ideas post and did a Google image search for Harry Potter Wanted Posters, then printed some of the images to hang as decorations too.

Hanging Streamers

I’m happy with the way this turned out, but of everything I did to make the day special, this was the one thing that made me think that MAYBE I had lost my mind. By the time I had done all of the above to surprise them for the day, it was about 1 am. I probably should have just let it go, but I had already spent $6 on crepe paper and who am I to let that kind of sunk cost go to waste. This took me longer than it should have. I used a piece of PVC pipe (actually Fort Magic), measured out crepe paper the length of the doorway and taped them carefully onto the pipe in alternating colors. (I sort of wish I had made them a little longer, but when I measured, I forgot about the height of the frame.) If my recollection is correct, by the time I went to bed, it was around 2:30 am. If you decide to do this, maybe plan better than I did. I will say that my kids did really enjoy the streamers. It was the first sign when they woke up that there was something special going on. (All of my kids sleep in the same room.)

Harry Potter Themed Food

In addition to decorations, I also pre-planned what we were going to eat. I checked out a couple Harry Potter cookbooks from the library, but cooking is not really a strength of mine. I needed something even simpler than what they were offering. I used some of the names of their recipes as inspiration, but otherwise, I just did my own thing.

Harry Potter Themed Breakfast

For breakfast, I found a green drink at the grocery story (Bolthouse Farms Green Goddess), took off the label and called it Polyjuice Potion. I made a fruit platter and just called it Professor Sprout’s Fruit Platter. We bought some pluots that we don’t often buy and called them Mandrake Fruit. I followed this blog post by Raising Dragons to make Dragon Eggs. We also dipped some pretzel sticks in melted chocolate and covered them in sprinkles to make Magic Wands. My kids helped with this the night before.

Harry Potter Themed Lunch

For lunch, I honestly don’t remember why I made Hagrid’s Bath Buns. I’m guessing the name was inspired by one of the cookbooks, but that information has left my brain in the past year. From my notes, it looks like I followed this recipe from Feasting at Home. I think the idea for Pumpkin Pasties also came from a cookbook, but I know I didn’t follow the recipe from the book. I just bought puff pastry sheets and a can of pumpkin pie mix (it may have been in my pantry from the fall). My daughter and I cut squares of puff pastry, spooned the filling inside, folded into triangles, then baked for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees F. They were easy and not horrible, but I’m sure people with culinary skills could do better.

I added some liquid chlorophyl that I purchased while on a health kick to hummus and called it Gillyweed Hummus to serve with Professor Sprout’s Veggie Tray. I followed these instructions from Famous Family Recipes for Butterbeer. My kids loved it.

Harry Potter Themed Dinner

For dinner, I heated up some frozen meatballs and called them Molly Weasley’s Meatballs which I served with gravy. Since I personally don’t eat meat, I also made some tahini/breadcrumb/bean-based “meat”balls for myself. We roasted some potatoes and called them Bubotuber Fries. I found some asparagus at the grocery stores that was a little purple and was inspired to call it Devil’s Snare. My most ambitious project was dessert. I loosely followed this Treacle Tart recipe from My Poppet Living, but I made a crumble topping instead, because it seemed like it would be easier.

Harry Potter Themed Treats

Throughout the day we also had various Harry-Potter themed treats. We actually went to a real candy shop a week before, which we never do. We bought various candies for the day and pretended like it was candy from Honeydukes. I also bought some lemon-flavored popsicles and called them Lemon Pops. These were just little treats we had between meals that kids could snack on while they watched.

I served the magic wands with breakfast (and told my kids they had to have them last), but they would make good mid-day treats instead.

I also tried to make chocolate frogs, but I had a really hard time with the mold I bought. I’m going to need to look into the right way to do this without have the chocolate turn white and the little arms break off if I ever try this again. This is the mold we got, but I’m not sure it was worth it.

Harry Potter Marathon Logistics

Watching all 8 of the Harry Potter movies without breaks would take about 20 hours, which obviously isn’t ideal. In the days leading up to July 31, we watched one movie per evening for 3 days and then planned to watch 5 on the actual marathon day. However, we didn’t actually do it. The movies are about 2.5 hours each and that’s a long time, even for kids. We ended up watching four movies on July 31 and then watched the final movie the next day.

Between movies, we did take a few breaks. We played Harry Potter Clue between two of the movies. I don’t necessarily recommend it. Regular clue is just as fun and a better price, but we were gifted it and my kids love it. If you want a Harry Potter-themed game, this deck building one is a good, which we also own, but we didn’t end up playing it that day. Note that it’s only for 2 to 4 players.

Another activity we did, which was completely spur of the moment, was a potions lab. This was later in the afternoon when I felt like my kids’ brains were going to start melting if they didn’t get up and stretch for a bit.

We used to do this ALL the time when the kids were more like pre-school and kindergarten age, so I actually have a bin in my house with like 80% of what we need, making it easy to throw together. Here are some of the supplies we use:

• Baking Soda
• Distilled White Vinegar
• Cornstarch
• Saline Solution for contacts
• Glue
• Bora Solution (about 1 tsp of borax per 1 cup of warm water)
• Water with food coloring
• Cups or bowls
• Mixing supplies like chopsticks and eating utensils
• Measuring spoons
• Science-y supplies like test tubes and droppers

The advantage of supplies like these is that not only can kids can use them for baking soda and vinegar reactions, but they can also make fun textures like slime, oobleck or gak.

Approximate Schedule

Obviously, you can do what you want. I’m not the boss of you. Just so you can see how this looks realistically, though, here was sort of how it went for us:

10:30 pm to 2:30 am – decorate (do not recommend )

7:30 am – wake up to start breakfast

8:30 am – wake THEM up and let them appreciate all your hard work

9 am – start the first movie and have breakfast

11:30 am – play a Harry Potter themed game

12:30 pm – lunch and start second movie

3 pm – snack and start third movie

4 pm – take a break for potions play

5 pm – continue third movie

6:30 pm – short break and have kids help with dinner

7 pm – dinner and start fourth movie

I don’t know how I thought at some point we were going to fit 5 movies into the day. Maybe if I’d woken them up early, but then I would have gotten even LESS sleep! Also, in case it’s not obvious, I actually did very little WATCHING with my kids. About an hour before each movie ended, I would get up and go start cooking food or prepping potions or doing dishes, so of the about 10 hours of movie watching time, I probably only sat with them for about 3 or 4. The day went by fast!

If you decide to give it a shot, I hope it goes well and you and your kids have a memorable, magical experience!

Related Links

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Tabletop Games for Kids

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No Thanks! Details

Product: No Thanks!
Company: Amigo Games
Website: https://www.amigo.games/product/nothanks/
Recommended Age Range: Box says 8 and up. Any child that recognizes their numbers up to 35 (or is working on that skill) would benefit from this game.
Price Range: ~$13
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

I recognize that this is a small thing and doesn’t affect game play, but one of my favorite aspects of this game is all the words written around the cards. It’s like each card has a personality and is trying to entice you to pick it up or warn you against it. Many of the cards read like advertisements and my kids think it’s hilarious. It’s just a delightful touch.

As a family of 6, I am a huge fan of any game that allows for all of us to play, especially one that doesn’t take up much space. This one has fewer cards than a standard deck of playing cards, plus some tokens. In a pinch, you could use something else making this game higly portable. It is also very easy to learn to play. The instruction video produced by the company is just a touch over 3 minutes and we found it sufficient. Game play time is also only about 15 minutes, which is kind of perfect when you want to squeeze a little family fun into a busy schedule.

This game also has a suprising amount of addition and subtraction practice embedded within it. Unlike many games in which you really only have to pay attention to the numbers at the end when you are counting your score, this one requires strategic decisions throughout in which someone who wants to win will be motivated to do some simple on the fly addition and subtraction. Anytime I can get my kids practicing math facts without them complaining is a win in my book.

The last thing I love about this game is that there is not really any “meanness.” There’s no stealing or punishing other players. You make all the decision that affect your own score. There is strategy, so it’s not based just on luck, but you don’t have to hurt other players in order to benefit yourself. Don’t get my wrong…I love a good cutthroat game as much as the next girl, but when you’re playing with children, sometimes it’s just more headache than it’s worth if the game is going to end in tears. This one won’t!

Click here for more Board Games Reviews for kids of all ages.

Related Links:

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Cover Your Assets Details

Product: Cover Your Assets
Company: Grandpa Beck’s Games
Website: https://www.grandpabecksgames.com/
Recommended Age Range: Box says 8 and up, but this is a great game if you are trying to teach your child to understand double digit numbers.
Price Range: ~$17
Amazon Product Page (Affiliate Link)

Review

First the good: My teens think the name is hilarious. It is super quick to learn and easy to play. Anyone can play, even kids that don’t know their numbers yet, as long as they can match pictures and understand the concept of a wild card. It encourages math skills because kids have to add numbers like 5, 10, 15, 25, and 50 to keep score at the end. The entire game can be played in about 15 minutes, so it’s a quick way to squeeze in a little fun. The pictures are colorful and appealing. Also, it seems like a delightful, family friendly company.

The less-than-good: If there is anyone in your family who gets frustrated when they feel like they aren’t being treated fairly and is going to be upset by someone stealing their points, this game is probably not for you. Granted, there are a lot of games like this, and I definitely think that being a gracious loser and having good sportsmanship are qualities that we want to cultivate in our kids. However, I don’t feel like there is enough “fun” aspects of this particular game to justify the unpleasantness of an unhappy kid.

Personally, I would like to see a little more strategy and variety in game play to keep it fun and entertaining. When I polled my kids on what they thought of this game, my 10 and 13 year olds said they really liked it, my 15 year old said “meh,” and my 8 year old was not a fan. (Guess which one is working on losing gracefully. ) I’m sort of with my older teen. I definitely don’t hate it, but I don’t get excited about it either. Than being said, card games take up so little space, that I will probably hang onto it for quite some time!

Click here for more Board Games Reviews for kids of all ages.

Related Links:

Best Games for Kids
Best Gifts for Kids
Best Books for Kids

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