Netflix to the rescue for a playdate!

Can I be honest with you? I broke one of my parenting rules today. I've been at this parenting gig for a LONG time and one of my steadfast rules is that if you have a friend over for a play date, then there is no television.  Because...well...you have a friend over.  You should be playing, not watching TV.

But, there is this weird age that my younger kids are in that vacillates between playing and hanging out.  If you have a kid over the age of 9, you know what I mean. It's not that the kids are too cool to play, it's that sometimes they think they are too cool to play. 

Electronics and video games are far more engaging and with age, my kids and their friends are allowed to spend more time on these devices, which makes the imaginative play they were once so good at start to seem foreign.



 So I broke my rule.  But for good reason.  And shockingly, my plan seemed to work!




Netflix has an awesome new original series out called Dragons Race to the Edge.
It's an action packed story about what happens before How To Train Your Dragon 2...a prequel of sorts.

The boys had been outside playing with water balloons and had been running around crazy but had just come inside to tell me how bored they were and were wondering what else there was to do.

Well, I whipped out some trusty Dragon themed snacks {dragon scales were Doritos and Dragon Claws were Bugles} and let the boys sit down and watch one episode.


It didn't take long before they were engaging in imaginative play and pretending they were Hiccup and Toothless.


There was sword fighting and cardboard box building and Nerf wars that ensued all because they were inspired by the show and it's characters.

I'm sure you could even take some of the educational shows I mentioned last month, into a play date and create science projects and games that could keep the kids busy for hours.  
I may have to rethink my policy on TV and play dates. 

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