As every good Harry Potter fan knows, Harry's birthday is July 31. We spent a surprising amount of time this year celebrating that birthday of a fictional character.
Over the weekend, we went to the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum for their annual Harry Potter tour, which they do in honor of Harry's birthday. This 18th century apothecary is the perfect setting for Harry Potter. The apothecary supplies include such things as mandrake root and dragon's blood, which should sound familiar to Harry Potter fans. Though perhaps slightly anachronistic, I appreciated the hosts' use of iPads to illustrate their talks, with pictures of movie scenes as well as scenes from nature.
Meg was very quick with answers to questions and amazed me with her knowledge of even the minutest details of the Harry Potter books. Clare, however, was not to be left out. She came through with some impressive answers of her own.
Over the weekend, we went to the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum for their annual Harry Potter tour, which they do in honor of Harry's birthday. This 18th century apothecary is the perfect setting for Harry Potter. The apothecary supplies include such things as mandrake root and dragon's blood, which should sound familiar to Harry Potter fans. Though perhaps slightly anachronistic, I appreciated the hosts' use of iPads to illustrate their talks, with pictures of movie scenes as well as scenes from nature.
Meg was very quick with answers to questions and amazed me with her knowledge of even the minutest details of the Harry Potter books. Clare, however, was not to be left out. She came through with some impressive answers of her own.
The girls also enjoyed the photo opportunity in front of the Mirror of Erised. Meg acted out catching the golden snitch as well as vomiting up the golden snitch (referencing when Harry caught it in his mouth).
Clare and Anne just went for cuteness in their photos.
After our tour, we headed down the street to Dolci Gelati for butter beer ice cream.
The apothecary tour and butter beer ice cream was a wonderful outing, but it was not the end of our Harry Potter birthday celebrations. On Harry's actual birthday, we hosted a birthday party at our house and invited all of our friends who are Harry Potter fans. We were thrilled that 40 of our friends were able to join us on a Tuesday afternoon.
The girls and I had a blast decorating and preparing food for the occasion. There were so many great ideas available on Pinterest.
I purchased a pack of brown envelopes and hand addressed to Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. After adding a red wax seal, I taped them to string and attempted to make it appear that the envelopes were flying out of the fireplace.
The girls and I had a blast decorating and preparing food for the occasion. There were so many great ideas available on Pinterest.
I purchased a pack of brown envelopes and hand addressed to Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. After adding a red wax seal, I taped them to string and attempted to make it appear that the envelopes were flying out of the fireplace.
We provided our guests with both butter beer and pumpkin juice as beverages. We used this recipe for butter beer and this recipe for pumpkin juice. Both of these recipes were very manageable for a large group.
Next we set up a potions station. I searched for awhile to find a magical-type science experiment that would work for our group. I finally located this fun vinegar/baking soda based idea that came complete with Slytherin potions printable. I anticipated doing this "potion" several times with smaller groups, but the party just didn't move like that. We only did the potion once with lots of people around. While the potion worked well, in hindsight I would have just set up a potions table that the kids could have experimented with as they wanted. Meg, Clare and Anne did this after the party and had such a fun time.
We provided lots of games that we hoped kids (and adults) could play as they wanted. Once again, Pinterest was invaluable in locating these games. We set up Harry Potter "would you rather." For example, would you rather spend the summer with the Dursleys or Doloros Umbridge (yikes, that's a hard one). You can find the printable for this game here. We also had the polyjuice game, in which a Harry Potter character name is taped onto a players back and the player has to ask yes or no questions to determine who they are. You can find that game here. Also at that site, you can find a fun chart that allows party-goers to come up with their wizard name. Finally, we had a Horcrux Hunt, in which I placed each of the Horcrux items from the Harry Potter stories in places related to where they were found in the stories. That idea came from Heape of Love.
We set up a photo booth of sorts, which allowed kids to become Sirius Black when he escaped from Azkaban. That printable can be found here.
For sorting we had a stool and a sorting hat, but we relied on an origami "fortune teller" to do the sorting. This sorting printable can be purchased at teacherspayteachers.com and the instructions are found here.
Finally, I will leave you with a slide show of our Harry Potter inspired food and random decorations. We had so much fun.
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