Update on the Dragon Eggs

I decided I didn't like the eggs with the air-dry clay.  I went to Michaels and got some bake-dry clay but discovered they didn't have the green in large quantities.  I ended up getting black just to fool around with.

Here are the results!

I actually liked the darker chain on the other eggs we did, but I had thought I needed lighter colored chain for the black clay.  I still think they turned out pretty cool!  I think I would like to still do the green and maybe use a straw dipped in black paint to make some cool round spots on them.  Still, I'm pretty happy with this one!

Monsters, Flowers and Eggs! Oh, My!

Today was a very active day in Hogwarts.

We started off by doing our wand worksheets.  We made our wands last time and this time we got to fill in our worksheets about what our wands are made of.  The form we used is on my printable tab.

Next we worked on our dragon eggs!  I got red and green clay (I wanted something that would dry hard, so I got some of the crayola clay that hardens in 72 hours).  We wrapped the clay around plastic easter eggs and then added gems, chains and other designs.  We were not too thrilled with the clay.  I think we will try this again with a better clay that can be molded and sculpted better.  Here is what they look like:

I will report back on how well they hardened.  I believe the jewels are going to fall off once it dries.  We shall see.

After making our eggs, we got to get our first monster for our Care of Magical Creatures class.  I had all the monsters in a bag (like they used on the movie to draw the dragons out of in The Goblet of Fire).  Each student picked a monster and then picked a cage for it.  Then we all filled out worksheets (see the printable page for a copy of it).

Finally, we had Herbology class.  I sent the students out to find small flowers and other things to press.  I read a post on how to microwave your flowers for emergency pressing (or for those of us who have no patience!).  HERE IS THE LINK for how to microwave pressed flowers.

I didn't have any crafts picked out to do with them but we did put them on a page for our Herbology manual. (And of course I have a copy of the form/worksheet on my printables tab!)

It was a wonderful day!  I can't wait for next time!

Summer Hogwarts 2014

It's that time of year again!  Summer vacation is here and we have begun our Summer Hogwarts Academy!

Our first order of business is to watch all of the movies!  So far we are up through number 6!  They are soooo good!  It certainly gets us in the mood!

While watching the movies, we made our wands!  They turned out really well!

I also handed out the notebooks - we have several this year:  the main manual, Herbology, Dragonology 101, The Essential Dragon Manual, the Art of Divination and Magical Creatures: a guide to mystical beasts.

The Manual has sections inside:  Defense Against the Dark Arts, Charms, Transfiguration, Astronomy, Spells and Potions. (I will show pictures of those later)

The rest are below:

There is also a Fairy Manual, which I don't have a picture of at the moment because they are all in use!

We also enjoyed Potions Class by making Butterbeer (rootbeer floats!).  It was just like being at Honeydukes!

I am looking forward to a wonderful summer!  I will post the printables on my printables tab so you can enjoy them too!