Not So Lazy Days: Making hand-made wands for little wizards

Harry Potter is a pretty big deal. The boys will pick up anything that resembles a wand and start pointing it at items around the house shouting "riddikulus" or "wingardium leviosa" and some times even "asparagus."

(They made that last one up... I think it's used for dueling.)

So, to start off a week of Harry Potter-related activities (the last movie comes out on Friday, and we have tickets...), we turned our living room into Ollivander's workshop and made a few wands.

Using a multi-colored pack of pipe cleaners, I separated few colors to represent the different cores a wand can have. Then, I separated out the browns and greens for the wood of the wands.

The little one decided he wanted to make Harry's wand and choose the orange pipe cleaner representing phoenix feather for the core of his wand. The oldest one chose to make Ron's wand and picked the purple representing unicorn hair. Then, I choose red for dragon heartstring, used in Hermoine's wand.

We each took three dark browns and then either a light brown or green to represnt the wood of the wands. We wrapped the browns around the colored core. To signify the handle end, we coiled another brown around one end.

After playing for a bit, the oldest decided to bend his wand so it could be broken, like Ron's... he soon was "eating slugs."

I've challenged myself to find a new activity to do five days a week every week of the kids' summer vacation. Activities will fall under one of three categories: Arts & Crafts, Sports & Games or Field Trips. Follow me on Twitter @readallaboutsam for immediate updates on posts!