Click here to see all the Harry Potter decorations!
When the kids arrived we started with the sorting hat. I bought school rings so after they heard their school, they had to wear their school ring. We also made wands out of Totally Bamboo Twist Chopsticks, Set of 5 pairs
and hot glue and passed them out at this time.
We taped a phone into the hat and used the app Zello as a walkie talkie. My husband was in another room with a script (we sorted the kids into schools before the party). When I said loudly, “It’s Ella’s turn”, he read the script for her on his phone and the hat magically talked!
Ella is so excited to be in Ravenclaw!
Here is Bellatrix passing out the wands!
The next event was “Bean Boozled”. I bought each child Harry Potter Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans ~ 6 Pack
and they got points for swallowing the “fun” flavors.
I gave them each a dixie cup to spit if they needed. About half of the kids played and then half of those dropped out of the game mid-way! To watch them chew was hilarious though!
Next up was potion class outside!
The “new professor” at Hogwarts was a little ambitious with his potion making skills!
Then it was the kid’s turn to make a “cloud” potion!
I love seeing the “students” faces in this picture! Look at their green clouds!
The potion (baking soda, water, drops of dish soap, and vinegar dyed green) worked so well, that it actually started to rain and we had to run inside for cake! Darn! 😉
Singing to Rilyn!
Cake time!
During cake time, we dismissed the kids one at a time to go to Honeydukes and fill a bag with all the fun candy to take home!
The rain was short thankfully, and so after cake, we went back outside for the “Quidditch All-Star Tournament”. Basically, we had four stations set up in our backyard and the four schools had to travel to each one together and try to earn points and be the winning school! The four stations were, “Quaffle Shoot Out”, “Quick Feet, Dead Aim”, “Dragon Egg Toss”, and “Snatch the Sneaky Snitch”. All of these games were designed to assess the skills of a great Quidditch player!
For Quaffle Shoot Out, we used our trampoline and took the net down and made Quidditch hoops. We used Rilyn’s uncle, aka Death Eater to be the goalie and he tried to block the students from throwing balls into the hoops!
The Dragon Egg Toss was a water balloon toss! Every great Quidditch player needs good hand eye coordination!
Quick Feet Dead Aim tested their speed in various obstacles, and then their aim to knock down as many Valdemort faces as they could!
Snatch the Sneaky Snitch was a fishing bob we spray painted gold and threw on the roof. We let it roll down and each student had to catch it! It was tricky because fishing bobs bounce around everywhere as they are rolling down the roof!
As James was tabulating the points, we went back inside for edible potion making! The kids LOVED this! They got to mix various sodas, pop rocks, fruit gushers, Kool-Aid, Tang, etc. We gave them each lots of straws so they could taste each others! Some of them named their potions and wrote recipe cards! LOL
Then it was present time!
James came in with the scores, and Gryffindor won the Quidditch tournament, which happened to be the birthday girl’s team! Can you tell she was excited?!
After the party was over, we presented Rilyn with a ticket on the Hogwarts Express as her gift. What could it mean?!
That’s right! A trip- just me, daddy, and Rilyn- to Universal Studios Orlando Harry Potter land in July!!
The sweetest thing happened during this moment. We told Ella beforehand about the gift (we are going to take all the kids on a special alone trip when they turn 10 years old.) Ella was so happy for Rilyn that she cried “happy tears” for her! She kept saying, “I’m just so happy for her!” Here is a picture of Ella crying happy tears for her sister!
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the paquettes 