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Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Legopalooza

    Before we dove into the Lego cake  we had activities for our young building enthusiasts at our Harry Potter Lego party. First up was the Lego head jars.  On Pinterest, they were prepared ahead of time and filled with candy Lego bricks to bring home as favors.  Instead, I used this as our opening activity as guests arrived.

Notice the additional Harry Potter touch?
Lego head jars:
10 baby food jars (labels peeled)
1 big jar of yellow paint
10 paint brushes
Sharpies

I set out paper plates with globs of yellow paint and let the kids go to town painting their jars.  When the jars dried, they drew Lego head faces.  Each guest took home a jar to use to store those tiny Lego pieces.

Lego artists
Next we painted with Legos.  We had a big bag of outgrown mega blocks.  The kids dipped these in different colored paints and used them as stamps.  I was surprised how much the kids got into this one.  When dried, we used the creations as wrapping paper or place mats.
Where will the sorting hat place you?


Next came the most popular activity of the day, the Lego Hunt.  Thanks to Librarian extraordinaire, Chrissie Morrison for sharing this idea.  The kids took turns hopping up on the stool to be sorted into their house colors.  When I took the hat off, I slipped a post it note from under the edge to reveal their color.  The guests really enjoyed combing the yard to get the hidden Legos.  Then the teams spontaneously built small creations with their found bricks.

 At this point we headed inside for Harry Potter Wheel of Fortune.  Using a dry erase board, I used the words and clues from a crossword puzzle I dug up from my lesson plans. The children remained seated in rows according to their team colors.  After their turn they went to the back of the line.  Luckily I had cousins to assist this activity.  We had to step up the difficulty when the teams solved the puzzle quickly!

We ended the party with cake and presents and every guest went home with their Lego head jar and a Harry Potter potions class Lego set.  It was a fun party to plan and of course, the birthday boy received many wonderful Lego sets to continue the building experience!