A Day at Hogwarts

 The following was a party my mother and I just planned for my nephew's 8th birthday, a big year in our family. Because my son and my nephew have birthday's within a few weeks of one another we counted this as my son's party with friends, even though the guests were friends of my nephew. I will only apologize for the quality of my photos once.  I'm taking pictures on my phone until I can save my penny's for a digital SLR. Who knows when that might be. : )

 Of course any Harry Potter party would not be complete without an acceptance letter similar to the one Harry receives his first year.  Click here for a copy of ours.  After children arrived at Platform 9 3/4, they ran through the brick wall (a shower curtain from the dollar store my nephew painted with a sponge) into Diagon Alley. I found most of our printable signs at dirt&sunshine.

Once in Diagon Alley our guests visited Olivander's wand shop, where they were chosen by a wand, (we had a little key chain that made noise and we pushed it to indicate when each child had found the right wand.)  I found a whole bundle of bamboo sticks at the dollar and we cut them to size.  More then a dozen wands for $2!

They also picked up their parchment for potions class while visiting Diagon Alley. Click here for the file.

Next it was time to be sorted.  Our hat was placed on their heads while they chose either Slytherin or Gryffindor from a pumpkin basket.  I whispered in their ears and gave them a chance to accept or choose another house, after all, the sorting hat does take your choice into consideration.

 Once the children had been divided into their houses it was time for Potions class, the highlight of the day.  I had read on several other blogs that this was the favorite activity so I planned accordingly.  
 

 We set this up outside so we could just hose the area off once it got messy, which it did.  Ever the Montessorian, I used all types of jars and bottles with different lids, different types of grinders, a mortar and pestle, a cutting board for cutting our caterpillar larva (dried prunes my mom had in her pantry).  We found all kinds of great things in my mom's food storage.  I made these printable labels in word.
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Everything we used for potions was edible in case the children wanted to try them out, which they did to my surprise.  We used lots of different colored sports drinks for the liquids.  I was glad we kept the leftovers handy because we refilled many  liquids 2 or 3 times.

We used a couple of different kinds of vinegar and several jars with colored baking soda and if I were to do it again I would add even more.  These were the favorite because they caused a good reaction when mixed. There was a neat potions demonstration on dirt&sunshine, the same link as above, that I did at the beginning to get them thinking.

The children mixed their potions in quart jars we had around the house.  We eventually went and got one of our cauldrons for children to dump their mixes into when they were ready to try a new one because they couldn't get enough.

 The children gave the potions names, recorded what they were meant to do, and recorded the ingredients on their parchment with real quills my mom uses in her classroom.

After potions it was off to the Quiddich pitch, 2 posts with hula-hoops attached.  The boys loved this and had a great time.

My boys made a birthday cake that looked just like the one Hagrid makes for Harry in the first movie, bad spelling and all.  Easiest cake I ever made. : ) I didn't get a great picture of the end product but we placed it in a cake box that we got for free at our grocery store and tied it with twine.  We told the boys that Hagrid had brought it by while they were out playing Quiddich.

Everyone enjoyed it the cake!

Before we sent our guests home we made a trip to Honeydukes...

...where they found chocolate frogs, (I found free printables through a google search)

Beartie Botts Every Flavor Beans, 

(I wasn't about to cut out the windows and paste on plastic windows so my beans were in a celephane bag),

And jars of Licorice Wands, Warewolf Fangs, Lemon Drops, Chocolate Galleons, and Acid Pops.  It was a magical day!  And yes, I would do it all over again. :)