Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Welcome to Hogwarts

Welcome to Hogwarts Castle. I am your personal tourist guide and let me show you the magic and the mayhem.


Hogwarts castle has three towers. The Gryffindor - which has a red flag, the Ravenclaw, which had a yellow flag and the tallest astronomy tower
Students are not allowed to go into the forbidden forest. But there are unicorns in there (with long necks) and acromantula
Mr Weasley's car also lives in the forbidden forest
The Whomping Willow resides on the edge of the grounds, right next to the forbidden forest. To get to the castle, you have to climb the stairs, cross the drawbridge across the lake and go into the entrance hall.
Here is Hermoine Granger, on her way to the library, though she seems to be going the wrong way

The Griffindor lion and the Slytherin serpent (which may be a basilisk), stand guard
And finally, the quidditch pitch and the stands. it is currently empty, but during the Quidditch season, I understand it can get quite full with spectators.

The making of Hogwarts:

The boxes that husband had cleared from the storeroom were just there. I had used some for shadow puppets, and various other toys, but they were still there.

there have been a number of cardboard castles floating recently in the blogophere and I was quite ninspired by Playeum's chocolate factory idea, which unfortunately we had missed. The girls were fresh from the Harry Potter madness, we had finished the first two books but have put the third book on hold so as not to get oversaturated with chapter books.

But making Hogwarts castle seemed to be a great idea, and the girls took to it enthusiastically after I cut the door out of the kettle box.
 It was Anjali's idea to make a drawbridge across the lake and make the stairs with the legos. Later, she got some blue paper to cover the lake, as you can see from the finished model

It was also Anjali's idea to make the Quidditch pitch, with a base so that the goalposts will not fall when you threw a Quaffle into them. She also stacked boxes to make raised stands.

The forb odden forest was a bit of an interesting story. At first, Anjali just wanted to put an acromantula to represent the forbidden forest. We had an acromantula afterall, Sophia's proud creation from her class. However, i dug out the old home made playdough that I had whipped up when Sophia had broken her leg. it was sitting in the kitchen table and we had all but forgotten about it. Miracles of miracles, the stuff was actually good after six weeks. I mean, it was home made and organic, and perfectly soft and usable. I have seen store bought playdough going bad  after a week or so.

I remember seeing somewhere, I think it was the artful parent, where kids made a table top forest with leaves and playdough. So we cut out some leaves from the balcony garden, and made our own forbidden forest.

The acromantula, ofcourse had the position of honor
 But we decided to include an unicorn and Mr Weasley's car
 Sophia then brought a long stemmed money plant, waving it around and saying, "Mom, this is the Whomping Willow!" And so it was.

Anjali and I helped construct a base for it using legos and tape and it resides at the edge of the forest

2 comments:

  1. Marvelous! Go gals go :) !

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  2. Very very nice Kiruthika they have captured the theme beautifully! Swati

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