Boo!

Happy Halloween!  My kiddos have been asking to have a Harry Potter party for month and months.  We opted to make it in October as a sort of birthday party/Halloween party for all three of the big kids.

Last Saturday was the day!  I wish I had a ton of pictures, but I was so busy that I only got a couple.

We began with the sorting--each child drew a colored stone from a witches hat for the sorting.  We only had two houses: Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff, since I thought everyone would want to be in Gryffindor and no one in Slytherin.  We had several younger children along, so we just called them blue and orange teams for them!

I used Mason jars with the same stones to keep track of house points as we played games.  The first class was transfiguration.  The kids each drew an animal to transfigure into (charades).  The smaller children had a separate set of clues with simple animals like dog and cat and a picture to help them know what they drew.  The older set had some common animals and some magical creatures mixed like a unicorn, hippogriff, and a dragon. (10 points for each correct guess)

Then we had charms class.  Each student had a wand (straw).  The house who was able to levitate their feather the longest won.  This class was very short.  Neither class lasted 5 seconds!  It we were to do it again, I think I would use a balloon instead. (50 points to the winner)

We had planned to have broom stick races outside as well.  The weather was good for it, but several of our guests seemed timid, so we opted to skip it.

Then we had one of my favorite parts of the party.  I had made a Marauder's Map, complete with the Latin words around all the rooms, and quite a few clues.  Some of the clues led you to pick something up (a dragon egg, Trevor the toad, and a phoenix feather), while others just led to the next clue.  The items earned you 10 points when they were turned in.  The goal though was to find the golden snitch.  The last clue gave its location in simple riddle.  It took the teams a little while to find it (I used a Ferraro Roche candy with yellow feathers hot glued to the wrapper).  (150 points to the finder)

Then came the feast.  I really wish I had snapped a picture of the table!  We had:
Professor Sprout's veggie tray
Snitch Cake (a ball cake with wings from a hanger and netting)
Pumpkin Pasties
Chocolate Frogs (I used a mold)
Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans (Jelly Bellies)
Olivander's Wands (pretzel rods)
Miniature Baskalisks (gummie worms)
Polyjuice potion (a mix of pistachio pudding, cool whip, pineapple, and marshmallows)
Viritaserum (water)
and Butterbeer (easy and dairy free for a friend, aside from the cream on top)

I also made wands from dowel rods.  I used a glue gun to fashion handles.  Then we painted the wands black and the handles silver.  They were all somewhat different that way.

Lastly, I made a huge Daily Prophet as a photo back drop.  I had headlines cut out that the kids could choose to have pictures with.  We didn't get a lot of pictures there, but there were a few!