1. Sorting Hat Station

Sorting Hat Sign: The birthday girl quickly made our sign, but if you aren’t as good at eyeing special-lightning fonts like she is, then totally print out a simple sign for your sorting station.

Laptop: You’ll need a quiz to sort your guests! If anyone ends up with 50%|50% or 25%|25%|25%|25%, remember that the Sorting Hat listened to Harry who would fit in both Gryffindor and Slytherin, and he got to chose the one he wanted.

House Reveal Glitter Cups: I saw the idea of revealing your house through pouring water into a cup that has a drop of food coloring at the bottom, so that as you pour clear water, the liquid appearing in the cup is either red, blue, yellow, or green. I came up the idea of spray the outsides of little clear plastic cups with spray adhesive and adding gold glitter so that no one would notice the drop of food coloring! It was super fun!

Felt ties: Once they are sorted, they grab the correct tie and return to the rest of the party. Here’s a link to a tutorial on how to make your own Hogwarts Felt Ties.

 

2. SLYTHERIN Wanted Wizard Photo-backdrop

SUPER SIMPLE BACKDROP HERE, Y’ALL! To start, with two small pieces of veritcal tape on either end, tape one long horizontal piece off masking tape STICKY SIDE POINTING AWAY FROM THE WALL in a straight line below the ceiling.

Next, cut equal-length strips of streamers and stick them to the tape! After add printed Wanted Wizard posters. This backdrop can be used for any party, you just choose the streamer colors and the pretty embellishments!

3. Low-Cost/Handmade Hogwarts Decorations

Harry Potter specifically is easier to do on a small budget because as long as you include all of the house colors, the decorations will feel official. Our decorations were almost exclusively made of dollar streamers, like 14 sheets of felt, three tablecloths, handmade character chopstick wands, and part of a package of balloons. I added a few of my own things as decorations, like the stuffed animal dragon, or the Hogwarts moving picture frame. Also, the activities really acted as decorations too! Just look at the glittery cups at the sorting station make the whole kitchen feel a little more magical!

4. DIY Pencil Wands

The essentials of this DIY are pencils, hot glue, and paint! With the hot glue, you drip designs onto the pencils and let dry. You could prep a bunch like we did, or older party guests could design their own. Next you paint, and if you want add jewels, pompoms, glitter to your magical little creation!

Here’s a link of a step-by-step pencil wand DIY: DIY PENCIL WANDS

5. Quidditch

Online you’ll find many versions of Quidditch, but the absolute, essential factors to make this party game successful would be: 1)Two Hula Hoops and somewhere to hang the hoops from(at least one for each team), 2) a ball representative of the Quaffle, and 3) 6 players.

With this set up, you would have two keepers, one protecting each hula-hoop goal, and four people as chasers for the “Quaffle,” two on each team.  You choose what you play to, but we made each quaffle goal worth 10 points and played to 100.

If you have enough people, then you can also have the fastest person be the golden snitch and add two seekers. For the Golden snitch, the game does not end if caught, instead it’s worth 30. And then if you have even more, you can add the pieces and players for beaters and bludgers. Keep in mind, as you add players, you may want to add more hoops and more chasers, etc.

Here’s a link to some Quidditch Rules!

6. Handmade Party Favors

We have some a few sewing-machines wizards in the family, so our party favors were these super nice, handmade pencil bags! I know that for sure, I won’t be personally sewing up fifteen pencil bags for anybody anytime soon, but the DIY wands above, could easily be a party favor and maybe hand them a little bag of fruit gummies as they walk out the door, and honestly, those are better party favor gifts than some itchy, plastic ring with Harry Potter’s face on it.

Here’s a link to some great DIYs that you and the birthday kiddo could make as favors, or that your guests could have fun making themseles: DIY Harry Potter Crafts