Harry Potter Party
Ollie wanted a Harry Potter themed party for his 9th birthday so we have had fun planning it together, with a few surprises thrown in for him! We decided to run the party as though the children were new students at Hogwarts & would attend several lessons, earning house points along the way. After a feast in the Great Hall we would announce the winners of the House Cup followed by a photo booth session and a Ball - games during the ball would earn them gold Galleons which they could then spend at Honeydukes & put the sweets in their party bags.
The party invite was based on the Hogwarts acceptance letter with the party details added in. I also asked them to put four qualities in order of importance to them with their RSVP - courage, intelligence, loyalty & ambition - in order to 'speed up this year's sorting'. I used this to preassign them into their preference of houses (they all know the books so knew which houses they were showing an allegiance to with their preferences!) & made them each a sticker to wear with their name & house on which helped with assigning house points. I was surprised & relieved to find that only four of them favoured Gryffindor & I only had to give one person their second choice house.
I tried to emulate the writing style on the envelope to Harry in the films and got some wax seal stickers from eBay for the back.
When they arrived at the hall, the 'pupils' had to enter through Platform 9 3/4. I made this with an old single bed sheet, a large sponge & brown paint. It was very easy but took a while! I then cut a slit up the middle of it, stuck a platform logo at the top of the slit & pinned it up over the hall entrance.
The first activity was to make their own wand - they used these at the party & then took them home in their party bags. Ollie & Phoebe had collected lots of sticks on a walk in the woods. I trimmed them all to a similar size with secateurs and put these out with thin ribbons, patterned washi tape & small sticky jewels.
Once they had made their wands I gathered them together & welcomed them to Hogwarts. I explained that they would be divided into two groups of eight for their lessons & would then swap over & do the other lesson afterwards. I also advised that the groups would be changed after every two lessons so that they would get to be with all their friends at some point (I preassigned the groups & made sure that everybody got to go with the birthday boy at least once as well as being with their close friends) and that they would be earning house points for doing well in their lessons as well as for good sportsmanship & good effort.
Here are the lessons we did:
Care of Magical Creatures
A Norwegian Ridgeback dragon had laid some eggs (a plastic egg & spoon set from Home Bargains) and then fled into the Forbidden Forest. They needed to be reunited with their mother so that she could breathe fire on them to keep them warm.
One at a time, the children had to carry an egg on a self-heating spoon (whilst the waiting children cast 'Incendio' spells on the remaining eggs to keep them warm) to the nest in the Forbidden Forest (I used a forest backdrop I already had from our Seasons party as the forest & 'scarified' it by adding spiderwebs & a bat plus I stuck on a line of plastic spiders heading to Aragog). On their way they had to be careful to step over tree roots (large sticks) & basilisks, not to stand on spiders or centaur poos (from a poo-related game we have - Ollie's idea!!) and to weave around bow truckle houses (toy traffic cones with twigs glued to them). If they dropped their egg they had to start again. There was a 60 second timer and they received a house point for every second remaining when they placed the egg in the nest. I made the nest out of straw & sticks.
Quidditch Practice
This was a popular one! We hung three hula hoops from a string across the room for Chaser practice. One at a time, they had a toy basketball and had to run up on a broom & shoot for the hoops, avoiding my husband Edd the keeper! 5 housepoints if they scored a goal.
Once everyone had had two turns they then took part in Beater practice. With an inflatable microphone as a bat, Edd threw five ballpit balls at each pupil in turn - five housepoints for each ball they managed to hit.
Spells & Charms
There was two parts to this lesson. In the first part they practiced floating charms. With a white bowl to a pair, they drew a solid shape on the bottom of it with a SpelloPen (AKA a whiteboard marker). As the teacher poured a potion into the bowl (warm water), they chanted 'Wingardium Leviosa' with their wands & sure enough, many of the drawings lifted off the bowl & floated on the water!
I found that black & red ink worked better than blue & green and small shapes worked better too - the more solid the better.
The second part of the lesson was duelling. This was basically 'rock, paper, scissors' with wands. In pairs they shouted out one of three spells at the same time. Expelliarmus beat Stupefy, Stupefy beat Impedimenta and Impedimenta beat Expelliarmus. We did best of three to decide the winner of each duel.
Defence Against the Dark Arts
The teacher spoke to them about Dementors & that the only way to repel them is with the Patronus charm. As they were talking a Dementor appeared (Edd in a black cape with some very impressive acting!) - they had to take it in turns to think of a happy thought & shout 'Expecto Patronum' whilst waving their wand.
As they were new to magic they couldn't see their own patronus but their teacher could see them & told them what their patronus animal was. House points for managing to repel the Dementor.
Divination
Ollie has wanted a magic 8 ball for a while so when I saw a crystal ball version for £5 in The Works, I couldn't resist buying it as a birthday gift & then using it for the party.
They took it in turns to ask the ball a 'yes or no' question that they knew the answer to, eg Is it Saturday today? If the ball gave the correct answer, the child had 'the gift' & received house points.
They then split into pairs & read each other's palms. I printed a palm reading sheet per pair that I'd found online and after a few minutes they told the rest of the class what they'd discovered about their partner. House points for inventive & detailed readings!
Potions
They were all very excited about this one! I set up two tuff trays & put the same ingredients in the middle of both, all labelled with free printable potion labels that I found online.
The first potion made was 'Felix Felicis' - liquid luck. I had some tubs of glitter in our craft box & whilst I didn't want to paint with them anymore now I'm aware of them ending up in the sea, I also didn't want to waste them so I thought putting them in mini sensory bottles to take home would be a good compromise. Once they'd carefully added their 'Veritaserum' glitter to their little potion bottles the children used a little cardboard funnel I'd made to half-fill it with oil (flesh-eating slug repellant).
They could then choose water with food colouring to fill the other half - red 'Amortentia' if they wanted to be lucky in love, blue 'Bezoar' if they wanted to always be healthy & strong or yellow 'Pepperup Potion' if they wanted to always feel cosy & warm. I then used my hot glue gun to seal the cork into their bottles & put them in their party bags.
The second potion they made was Happiness Potion, guaranteed to create instant happiness (because what makes kids happier than fizzing bubbling potions!) They had two mini-cauldrons (shot glasses) on a plate each. In one, they put 'Wartcap Powder' (bicarbonate of soda) and two pipettes of 'Draught of Living Death' or 'Bubotuber Pus' (pink & green washing up liquid). The adults then filled their second shot glass with 'Skele-Gro' (vinegar) and on the count of three, the children all poured their vinegar into the mixture & watched as it fizzed over the top of their cauldron! We then asked who felt happy - everyone who put their hands up earned house points as they had made their happiness potion correctly!
Herbology
This was the only lesson where all 16 children were together. This class was a party game similar to Musical Chairs - tables around the room held ear muffs/defenders, gloves & (unlit!) tea lights. The children danced to music in the middle of the hall, when the music stopped an adult would shout out a magical plant & they had to run to a table & get the correct equipment - for 'Mandrake' they needed ear muffs to protect them against it's deadly screams, for 'Bubotuber' they needed gloves as it's pus is poisonous and for 'Devils Snare' they needed a tea light as it shies away from light.
There wasn't enough equipment for the amount of children so each round, a child was knocked out. The further through the game they got, the more house points they won.
House Cup Ceremony
After the party tea & singing Happy Birthday it was time to announce the winners of the House Cup. We had kept score with two little chalkboards (£1.19 from The Works) throughout the lessons & added up the scores whilst the children were eating.
I made the big house cup by glueing a plastic container & yoghurt pot together and then coating those & a balloon in papier mâché (several layers of squares of newspaper coated in watered-down pva glue). Once dry, I popped the balloon & trimmed the top down to a cup shape. I then coated it in some leftover white wall paint to cover the newsprint & then topped it with a couple of coats of black & yellow paint before glueing a paper plaque to the base. It took a while to complete due to the drying time but was very easy.
I bought a pack of little plastic cups (£1 for 8 from Asda) & stuck a matching plaque on them before putting them inside the big cup - when the winners came forward to receive their cup they were each given a small one to take home with them.
The winning team - Hufflepuff!
Magical Disappearing Party Games!
As I said earlier, the plan at this point was to play games & earn gold Galleons to spend in Honeydukes sweet shop - 'Corners' using posters of the four House Crests as the corners to run to and then 'Musical Petrificus Totalus' (known as 'Musical Statues' to muggles). They would go to Honeydukes one by one as they got knocked out of the last game so we could calmly bag up their sweets & say goodbye.... However! By the time we had awarded the cup we were way past the advertised finish time (luckily I'd pre-warned parents we may finish late!) so we had to scrap the games altogether & give them five Galleons each as their house point totals were announced, with the victorious Hufflepuffs getting six Galleons to spend. The down side of this was that all sixteen children descended on the sweet shop at once, so I barely saw any of the parents never mind saying goodbye to them! The children seemed to really enjoy choosing what sweets they'd get in their party bags though & buying them with their 'own money'.
Honeydukes
I found a Honeydukes logo online & got some stickers printed on eBay (£2 for 48). I used these to create signs for the sweets as well as sticking them on the coffee jars the sweets were in & sealing the pink striped bags we put the sweets in. We also printed two A3 posters with the logo on to go at the front of the table.
Available to purchase were chocolate snitches (Ferrero Rocher with paper wings sellotaped on), chocolate frogs (I bought a silicone mould & made these myself), chocolate Galleons (chocolate coins), magic wands (the thick strawberry laces), basilisks (jelly snakes) & Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans (jelly beans).
I also got a couple of pink scoops for £1 from The Works to serve the sweets.
Decorations & Extra Touches
Photo Booth
I used the inflatable frame & prop kit I'd bought for my 40th party. The bowler hat I left as it was for Cornelius Fudge & three of the existing ones I embellished - I coloured in a beard to make it look like Hagrid's, added a peak & a 'Knight Bus' logo to a beret and stuck a 'Quick Quotes Quill' to some feminine glasses for Rita Skeeter.
I then took the others off the sticks & replaced them with my own - four house ties, Luna & Harry's glasses, a couple of speech bubbles and a Sirius Black poster frame.
Floating Candles
These worked much better than the ones I made for our Harry Potter Book Night party where I strung loo rolls in a long line.
I cut a strip of white cardboard, pierced a hole either side at the top & then used my hot glue gun to attach it around an LED tea light just below the holes. I then fastened a piece of invisible thread through the holes so it could hang over a hook. These hung above the party tea table, marking this area as the Great Hall.
Letters to Harry
I used the invisible thread again to make letters to Harry flying into the room like in the Philosopher's Stone. I wrote Harry's address on 8 envelopes & then stuck 4 each to a length of thread using some more of the wax seal stickers on the back of the envelopes.
Harry's Luggage
I made a display of Harry's Hogwarts luggage on top of an old suitcase of my Dad's.
I used Sharpies to turn this cardboard box into a trunk and used the back of one of the building boxes I made for my 40th NYC-themed party to make a pile of spell books on top (I would've like to paint this with damp teabags to make it look aged but ran out of time).
I found this secondhand ornamental birdcage for £2 on Facebook Marketplace & inserted a hand-drawn Hedwig on white card (browsing history = "simple Hedwig drawing", I find copying an image so much easier than drawing my own!)
Potions Backdrop
I used the back of one of my New York collages, stuck several images of potions shelves to the cardboard and propped this up behind the Potions tuff trays.
Bottled Love
I put some battery-operated fairy lights inside a corked bottle, wrapped it in tissue paper so you could only see the glow and stuck an 'Amortentia' (love potion) label on the tissue paper. It looked really effective on the Divination table along with a sequinned tablecloth, a Divination poster, some lanterns & crystal balls.
Party Tea Details
The party tea was your usual sandwiches, crudités & crisps but I had these Mary Poppins umbrella bowls so I covered the Mary Poppins logo with a glued-on paper luggage label which read 'Propurtee ov Rubeus Hagrid' & used these for crisp bowls.
I also bought some Harry Potter cake toppers from eBay.
The Birthday Cake
I really loved organising this party & I think it showed! I only wish I had made it a three hour party so we could have included the games but Ollie was very adamant that he would rather drop the games than the lessons so we made the right decision in the circumstances. It is always handy to have some activities that you can add or remove from the itinerary in case you are running early or late, as I discuss in my blog post Things I've Learnt About Party Planning.
Mischief Managed for another year! 🦉🔮
Comments
Post a Comment