A Harry Potter Birthday Bash!

My little cousin turned nine this weekend. She is totally and completely enamored with the Harry Potter series and thus chose Harry Potter as the theme for her birthday party.

To begin with, it was decided that we would recreate the Great Hall in the basement of her house. The basement is not a very large room, so we had to make a few accommodations. We placed a long table at one end of the room and then set four smaller card tables in front of it. Each table was decorated in the colors of one of the houses of Hogwarts. We wanted to light the room with candles to give it a more authentic feeling. However, with a crowd of nine year olds, we were a bit nervous about this, especially since the children had been instructed to come in wizard robes. Long, full sleeves, small children, and candles did not seem to be a good combination. Luck came our way when we found small electric candles at our local dollar store. They flickered and everything!

As the children began arriving, we sent them all outside where we had set up several simple games, such as a beanbag toss, to keep them entertained until everyone had arrived. Parents were also invited to stay if they wanted. Once everyone was there, the children were taken downstairs to our "great hall." We had brought an old stool and a witch's hat down and drew house names out of the hat to determine which house each child would be in, similar to the procedure with the sorting hat. The parents who had stayed were declared "professors" and were seated at the long table in the front of the room. The guests were fed a full dinner, something like what is shown for the Christmas feasts in the movies, and then sent back outside again.

Outside were several relay games. In one game the children tried to shoot a ball through one of three hula-hoops hung similarly to quiddich goals. In another game they had to "levitate" a feather by standing in a circle and blowing on it. The house that kept their feather in the air the longest won. For each game a house played, they gained points. The outdoor festivities ended with a scavenger hunt in which all the clues were somehow related to Harry Potter. For example, one clue read "I was flown into the Whomping Willow. Look under me to find your next clue," intending to guide the children to look under the car.

After the outside games were finished, everyone returned inside for cake and presents. The house that had the most points from the games - Ravenclaw in our case - got served cake first. Then each child was given a goody bag and sent home. It was a delightful time for everyone involved.