Each of my kids has gone through his or her own phase of “Harry Potter”. This particular Harry Potter party took place right before everything shut down for COVID, so we were lucky to get in the birthday party before parties were no more. There was a lot of preparation going into this party, but the kids had a blast and it ended up being very cost effective:)
The Cake
We all love Hedwig, and this was an easy cake to make. I baked the cake in 2 separate molds: a large glass measuring cup that can handle being put in the oven (like this one on Amazon), and a smaller cupcake tumbler pan (like these ones). Those two molds should stack nicely to make your head and body. Once those are on, you can use different decorating tips to create a fluffy owl. For the toes, just use some extra icing.
The Piñata
This piñata was super easy to make and it looked so good flying around as it hung from the tree. I used papier-mâché around a balloon to create the base of the Snitch. Make sure to leave a hole on either side of the body for a dowel rod to go through as the base of the wings. Once dry, paint the Snitch gold, then attach tissue paper wings to the dowel rod.
Harry Potter Party Activities
Sorting into Houses and Getting an Owl
At the very beginning of the party, each kid was given a quiz to determine what house she or he belonged to. You can find a wide variety of these online. I had to go through a few to find one that didn’t have obvious answers so the kids couldn’t answer based on what house they wanted to be in.
Once they had their results, they were each given a mini scarf with their house colours. I made these from felt.
After the sorting, it was time for the owlery.
These little owls are made from pom poms. You can find tutorials for how to make pom poms out of yarn on YouTube. If you want to speckle them like I did, just throw in a second colour every few layers. You can finish them off with felt features. The middle owl is a little bigger in the picture, as that one was for the birthday girl. The red and pink ones belong to my littlest two. They wanted special colours.
They could then put their house scarves on their new pets.
Ollivander’s Wand Shop
I premade a bunch of wands using dowel rods. Simply cut them to your desired length and sand down the tips to make them pointed. Create designs using acrylic paint. Finally, apply some varnish for extra protection. There are many different ways to make wands. I’ve seen some with hot glue used to add raised patterns and textures. The sky’s the limit. It depends on what resources and time you have available to you.
I preselected who would get what wand. When the kids came to the wand shop, I would have them try different wands as I pretended to be Ollivander. They got a kick out it when I would say things like “oh no, that’s a terrible choice!”.
Potions
We went down to the dungeons (our basement) for potions class. Everyone was given a paper plate with milk in it, and we made cool “potions” using food colouring and dish soap. Click here for a detailed explanation of the milk experiment. It’s really fun and easy!
Duels
This is basically “Rock, Paper, Scissors” with wands. Choose 3 spells from the Harry Potter books. Then decide which spell would beat which. I recommend writing it down on paper for a reference while they’re dueling. Have one pair at a time count off, then they have to cast one of the spells at the same time. Whoever wins moves on to the next round. Continue with each pair for round one. The winners of that round will duel each other and so on until you have the last 2 standing. We did best out of 3 for each round.
Quidditch
Based on the results of the sorting, you can divide the kids into two teams. If it doesn’t work out equally, you can just count them off. We had a keeper (who had a net to protect), a chaser (who had to throw a rubber ball into the opposing net), a beater (who had a tennis racquet and would try to hit a rubber ball at the chasers), and a seeker. The seekers had the hard job because they had to chase after my husband (the Snitch) and try to catch him. He’s a fast runner.
If a chaser was hit by a bludger, they had to pause for 5 seconds. Since it took a while to catch the “Snitch”, we rotated positions every few minutes.
You can definitely have the kids ride on broomsticks, if you are really intent on keeping with the story. We simply don’t have that many brooms in our house:)
This is probably one of my favourite parties we have had. It was fun to plan, prepare and execute. Everyone had a great time!
Want more Harry Potter? I have doll tutorials so you can make your own characters:
Harry, Ron and Hermione; Neville, Luna, Draco, and Ginny; Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, and Voldemort.