Enter the Wizard World – An Amazing Harry Potter Party

WIZARDING PARTY SERIES: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE WIZARD WORLD

If you’re celebrating a birthday party with a harry potter or wizard theme, there are tons of party ideas you can find, use, think up!  For this party, we focused on fun activities around the classroom and an adventure where they had to use their skills!.   

Try out a few of these suggestions below and let us know how it goes and what you think!

ARRIVAL

Most guests will trickle in a few minutes before or after the actual start time of the party.  To keep everyone in theme, have a few activities in an area of the party. 

We had a few tables where the guests were introduced to various ingredients and items from the wizarding world. 

• What flavor is this???  We separated out some Berttie Bott beans in different cups so that each guest could try one or two.  The goal was to match the Cup number to the actual flavor of the bean.  Note: We had a brave bunch in the groups so we picked a few of the ‘not-so-great-tasting’ flavors for fun.  But we also had regular jelly beans on the other side of the table for the younger, less adventurous crowd.

• This game is a variation of the old “close your eyes, reach into this mysterious bag, and tell us what you feel” game.  We styled it as a ‘Guess what the wizard ingredient is’. The Answer Key: (Dragon Skin – soft corn tortilla w/ a little oil, Unicorn Hair – corn husk silk, Witches’ Warts – raisins, Troll Guts – pumpkin guts, Troll Boogers – raisins in applesauce, EarthWorms – cooked spaghetti noodles, Bat Eyeballs – peeled grapes, Rat Tails – licorice vines, Goblin ears – dried apricot)

• Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes – We set up a small table with “joke” toys from the dollar store (simple items like toys, glow sticks, candy, etc).  The kids weren’t allowed to take anything from here as they all cost coins.  Throughout the party they collected these coins during the games and could visit the joke shop at the end of the party to trade in their coins. Note: some kids actually wanted to keep the coins, so be sure to use fake coins or any other coins you don’t mind giving away

FOOD & DRINKS

There are quite a few Harry Potter cookbooks out there, so if you’d like to follow some recipes, go ahead and grab some!   Otherwise, you can always ‘re-name’ some typical foods to make them sound more in tune with the wizard world.  We printed the labels on antique style paper (Vintage Antique Stationery)to add to the decor. 

• Appetizers
  • Herbology Bites – we used a super simple recipe from justsweetandsimple.blogspot.com: Herbology Bites (justsweetandsimple.blogspot.com)
  • Hogs Head Cornish Balls – Cookbooks may give you some recipes from scratch but we used regular old meatballs and just added a nice little label 🙂 
  • Felix Felicis Spinach Dip – we cheated here too and just labeled regular spinach dip as “Felix Felicis Spinach Dip”
• Main
  • In the wizard movies, there always seems to be a massive feast with tons of food: chicken drumsticks, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, roasts, fresh bread.  We decided to keep with that theme for this party. 
• Desert
  • Cockroach clusters – store bought turtle chocolates
  • Moonstone cookies – dark brown chocolate cookies
  • Olivander’s Wands – big pretzel sticks 
  • Treacle Tarts – mini pecan or jam bites
  • Rock cakes – mini chocolate muffins
  • Cupcakes w/ toppers
  • Pensieve – silver bowl w/ blue jello
  • Golden Snitches – Ferrero Rocher truffles to fill the Triwizard Cup
• Drinks
  • Liquid Luck – Label any of your drinks “liquid luck”
  • Butterbeer – if you’re brave or have a sweet tooth, butterbeer recipes can be found all over the internet, but we found our guests didn’t like the sweetness. 

GAMES

For this party, we had the kids go through a few treasure hunts that lead to the ‘final field’ where they had to use their wizard skills to battle a goblin who has taken all the wizard coins.  

We had quite an age range, so we divided them into easy, medium, hard levels.  Since our party was around Halloween, we had a few Halloween decorations that we could hide our clues around. 

• Treasure Hunt:
  • Clue Set 1. This set will be for younger children. There are no rhymes, just images & text to point them to the next area.
    • First try the tavern… you just might find a dragon eating some munchies before he flies away. (Answer: by the table of food)
    • Climb the mountain to find the princess castle. Your next clue has been left at the top of the tower. (Answer: picture of a castle or play castle if you have one)
    • Make your way through the enchanted forest to find some friendly animals. They will give you your next clue. (Answer: area with stuffed animals)
    • Hurry, hurry, you’re almost done, your next clue is hidden by the waterfall. (Answer: sink).
    • Now you’ve made your way through all the land, go back down the mountain and await the rest of the wizards before you battle the goblins!
  • Clue Set 2
    • If you find your next dragon, I hope that you’ll grin. It’s under a vegetable that’s lit from within. (Answer: lack o lantern)
    • The next dragon is by something that has spirit, yes it does. But even when he’s cheering, he still says boo. (Answer: ghost)
    • Where’s the next dragon? I think that I saw … it was by something that was made out of straw. (Answer: scarecrow)
    • The “point” of your next clue is really quite eerie: the woman who wears me calls children “Dearie.” (Answer: witch’s hat)
    • Boil, boil, toil, and trouble. Come get your final dragon, on the double! (Answer: cauldron)
  • Clue Set 3:
    • To find the hidden dragons, your wizard skills you’ll have to prove. Find what goes up and down but doesn’t move. (Answer: stairs)
    • This gets dirtier as it cleans. But use as many as you need, by all means. (Answer: napkins)
    • This has keys that can make a jingle but can’t open a single door. We’ve placed it on top of the dragon, just so it won’t soar. (Answer: under the piano).
    • Time is almost running out. Can you see the dragon’s snout? It’s by a thing that has two hands on its face; you can check it to keep pace. (Answer: clock).
    • When the sun has set and your eyes feel like lead, go here… because it’s time for ___. (Answer: bed)
    • The last and final clue is nearly here. Find what’s filled six days a week but if you don’t own it you can’t take a peek. (Answer: mailbox).
    • You’re almost at the very end, now back up to the top – your treasures and friends, you must defend.
• “Battle Area”. We set up different color balloons with coins inside.  If you’ve got a small group, you can assign a color for each child (as some younger ones may get upset if they have less balloons to pop).  Each child was given a “special wand” (skewer) that they could use – with parent supervision – to pop their balloons.
  • The pink balloons were evil pink fairies
  • The red balloons were hungry vampires 
  • The white balloons were snow monsters 
  • The green balloons were ogres
  • The blue balloons were water monsters
  • The yellow balloons were sun monsters
• Once all balloons were popped, we brought out the pull-string goblin pinatas filled with candy and more coins. 

Once all the candy and coins were gathered, we let the kids visit the Joke shop and trade in their coins for other goodies. 

GOODIE BAGS

If you want to keep in theme when you’re guests leave, sprinkle in some wizard or magic items for their goodie bag along with any of the regular candy or hand outs you want to give out. 

We found a few magic trick items at the dollar store and added those in.  We also gave each child a box of bertie beans and an official chocolate frog.