I have been teaching Hogwarts Summer Academy for years. My kids - and most of the neighborhood kids - have enjoyed the world created by J.K.Rowling every summer. It has been a time for crafts and magic; a way to keep away the summer blahs.
My computer crashed late last year and I lost 10+ years of Hogwarts craft ideas and templates. I figured since I am having to recreate the wheel, so to speak, I might as well share my magical adventures here!
We started this year's session and it is challenging now that Harry Potter has faded into the past. It is hard to teach about boggarts and remembrals when the kids haven't even seen the movies! So we started off by watching Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone yesterday. It was a big hit!
I started by making some bingo cards so I could get them all to watch the movie. (The kids range in age from just finishing pre-K to one going into 6th grade, so I have my hands full trying to keep them all happy!). I also had coloring pages ready to keep the younger ones busy.
They began to get antsy so we ended up painting our wands during the movie. I was surprised at how well even the youngest one did! I had pre-made the wands to the point of painting. I found an excellent tutorial on a way to make them using chopsticks and hot glue. I believe these wands are the best I've made yet! I did use some chopsticks, but found those a bit small for my taste, so I picked up some dowels in various sizes and used those, too.
The link to the website I used is
HERE. Very awesome site.
This one is mine - I painted it all in gold. I LOVE it!
Even my 2nd oldest joined in the fun (she is a "Professor" and helps with the kids):
Given that she is almost 20 years old, it just goes to show that Harry Potter never goes out of style!
I had the table all laid out with their wands and other goodies:
I had beanie ballz dragons all wrapped up for each kid (I mean, c'mon! who doesn't need a dragon??), Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, popcorn and fruit for them all.
The Beans I made by just getting jelly belly beans and put them in plastic baggies. I printed off a logo from the Internet and stapled them onto the bags.
I tried to buy some, but they are just not to be found! I also looked for Chocolate Frogs and all the other Harry Potter candy that you used to be able to get. I couldn't even find them at Party City - in fact, there were no Harry Potter party decorations or anything out there. I will have to plan earlier and buy on-line next time. I just didn't expect there to be a Harry Potter vacuum - I mean it's Harry Potter! Sigh ... kids have moved on to other things, but that doesn't mean we can't make sure they are exposed! I'm certainly doing my part!
I let them have duels with their wands (no hitting each other!). I pulled up Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets just to show them the duel between Snape and Gilderoy Lockhart. I had them do their best poses!
I also had them sorted into their houses. Normally, this is the first thing you would do, but since most of the kids had never even seen the movie, we had to watch the movie first. I had the older ones take a longer quiz on line and the younger ones do easier quizzes. My older daughters (also "Professors") helped do the sorting. We ended up with 3 Hufflepuffs, 1 Gryffindor and 1 Slytherin. My daughter in the picture above was already sorted into Ravenclaw in previous Hogwarts years.
Once they were sorted, I had each of them color their house crests. I also had them make up their own Bertie Bott's Bean flavor: Here is mine:
If I can ever figure out how to upload pdfs into a blog, I will post the blank forms here. My flavor was "spicy moonbeam" while we had another that was "dragon fire swirl." Tasty!
I made small 3-ring binders (1/2") for each of them to put their works of art in:
All in all, it was a great start! I have to get permission from the parents to post pictures of their kids and if they consent, I'll have lots of pictures of the kids having fun this summer! I don't charge for any of this - it's just fun for the kids. I can't do it every day because, as a lawyer, I don't have much time, but when I do find a slow day, I invite all the kids over and we have a grand Harry Potter adventure!
