On Saturday, February 17th, I had my first major Harry Potter event.
When I first planned for this event, I put out a FB poll asking if people wanted the program on a Thursday evening for an hour and a half, or on a Saturday for five hours. The response was highly in favor of a 5 hour Saturday program.
Due to a limited budget, a lot of the decorations were done by hand rather than purchased. I had the help of one of my coworkers,
N, who made some of the most amazing candles I have ever seen!
To make them, we collected toilet paper rolls, N covered them in white construction paper, used construction paper for the red and yellow flames, and hot glue drizzles off to make it appear that the candle was melting. When it was hung up and moving, the way the light hit the glue made it seem like it was really melting!
I used dollar store poster boards to make the House Banners and they came out pretty amazing! We printed and cut out the letters and House Crests. A different coworker (J) had given me HP animal stamps a while ago so we used those to give the poster a bit of a background.
(I'm Slytherin, so obviously that goes first)
(My coworker (N) who helped is Hufflepuff)
I started to re-read the books in order to have trivia questions at the ready but I didnt give myself enough time so unfortunately I only read 2.5 books which was NOT enough. I was told about the online game site,
Sporcle, so I went there in the hopes I would be able to find something I could use.
I found the BEST game boards that someone could use for a HP activity! They are called
Logic Puzzles. When I tried to do it myself it took me about 20 minutes, when I used it as a game puzzle it took them about 45 minutes to complete each one. The first House to complete the puzzle board received 4 pebbles which amounted to 400 points. The second House received 3 pebbles, the third House 2 and the last one got 1 for effort. Competition was high! And I loved it! I also joking awarded
Slytherin House random verbal points (they didn't actually get a pebble) for being an awesome House and verbally deducted points from Houses for various reason. Attendees found it funny except when I was taking points away from their House and complained that I was favoring
Slytherin (which I definitely was).
Here are the Logic Puzzles I used:
Here is how the program went:
I went downstairs and in my best Headmistress voice asked all the first years to follow me up the stairs. When everyone was in the room I played the Sorting Hat song off of
YouTube. I then had students pick a paper out of my hat and yelled out which House they got sorted into. Overall, people were happy with the House that they were sorted into. This helped mix things up and split friends to cause more engagement.
We started with two Logic Puzzles and then ordered pizza and soda. Attendees who did not bring food with them chipped in 5 dollars for pizza and soda. While everyone was eating, I played the YouTube movie
Voldemort: Origins of the Heir - An unofficial fanfilm which was followed by a short discussion. Only one person had seen it on their own so it was a nice was to give peoples minds a break from the logic puzzles.
After the movie, we did another Logic Puzzle then I pulled out the Trivia Questions I had prepared and awarded house points to individuals who answered very hard questions. This was an every man for himself activity. After about 4 rounds, I was asked to go back to the Logic Puzzles because they enjoyed that more and they liked talking with each other about the questions. So we went back to the last Logic Puzzle, unfortunately we couldn't finish it because the library was closing.
The program was supposed to run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It ran from 11:15 a.m. to 4:50 p.m. I quickly awarded first place in the costume contest to an attendee who came dressed as Hermione Granger when she took the Polyjuice potion and turned into a human cat. She had on a cat mask, a tail, Gryffindor robes, and even a gray pleated skirt! After that we counted points and found that
Slytherin had won the House Cup (no, I did NOT bug it), followed by
Gryffindor,
Ravenclaw and then
Hufflepuff. As they were walking out the door people were so happy and I heard a couple of "cant wait to do this next year!"
Unfortunately, I had drawn HP on a poster board and was going to do a 'pin the bolt on Potter' activity but we ran out of time. Will definitely be doing it next year! I had 4 people leave at 4 p.m. but everyone else stayed until 10 to 5. There was a total of 13 people at the program.
(Please done laugh at my artistic skills!)
SO I guess, I will be doing this again next year. I saved a lot of my decorations for next year and will be creating my own Logic Puzzles. I will be ordering pizza early on and will try to have more hands on activities as well. Maybe a wand decorating or a mug decorating craft.
And thats a wrap! Enjoy the room decorations!
(what they saw before entering the room)
(a reference to the spiders in book 2 and Umbridge in book 5)
(hung some HP letters in our fireplace and placed some Honey Dukes containers, Hedwig toy, some candles and Ollivander Wand box on the mantle)
(made with Boomerang)
I decorated the tables with House colored tablecloths.
Put a cup on each table for their 'House Cup'.
Cut off the long parts of the tablecloths into strips for decoration.
Put up the candles using fishing line.
Placed the House Banners near each House Table.
(People working hard on their Logic Puzzle)
(quick group photo before everyone left)
(me, working my magic)
