Friday, August 30, 2013

Harry Potter Party: The Quest for the Missing Snitch


This is the 8th in a series of 10 posts about our Harry Potter Birthday Party. You can read our other posts at the links below:
The Hogwarts Acceptance Letter
Invitation and Costumes
The Guests Arrive
Diagon Alley
Potions Class
Divination
At the end of our Divination Class, Professor Trelawney told the party guests that the words "Lemon Drops" would be important in their future. Just then a Ministry of Magic interdepartmental memo (i.e. a paper airplane) arrived in the Divination Tent. The kids unfolded the airplane and learned the startling news that the Golden Snitch had been stolen! The memo asked the guests to help find the missing snitch so that they would be able to play Quidditch before the party ended. The only clue that the Ministry provided was that the Golden Snitch was last seen in the Gryffindor common room.

Luckily just outside the Divination Tent was the portrait of the fat lady guarding the Gryffindor common room.

It was so cute to watch the kids stand in front of the portrait wondering what to do. After a few minutes, one of the kids shouted, "Lemon Drops! That has to be the password!" And sure enough the fat lady swung open to let the party guests into the playroom.



Inside the playroom the kids encountered a very dangerous Fluffy who was barking ferociously. (My son was outside the room playing some dog barking noises on a cell phone.) Don't you just love our Fluffy! We found three stuffed dogs at a Thrift Store. Then we cut off the bodies of the two littler ones and sewed the heads to the shoulders of the big dog. We attached fishing line to the dogs' heads and were able to manipulate Fluffy like a marionette puppet. So he moved and barked! His puppeteer was hiding behind the curtain on the other side of this little balcony just outside our playroom.


Hidden in the room was a recorder and some simple music.

After a few minutes the kids found the recorder and began to play it. Fluffy immediately went to sleep and started to snore. The kids had to climb up the stairs past Fluffy and jump down through the trap door behind him.


The next challenge involved navigating the devil's snare. I just tacked strips of burlap and fake leaves down our hallway and the kids had to climb over and under the fabric to get past the snare.




Once they had navigated the devil's snare they had to play wizard checkers! The girls competed against Bellatrix LeStrange in a fun game of checkers made with felt squares and paper plates. I had just pushed the paper plates inside out to give them the proper dimension.




Once they made it past Bellatrix they came to a chest that had a padlock that needed to be opened with a key. The kids knew instantly that they needed to find the flying keys. 


To make our keys we had printed these gorgeous wings drawn by Linda Smith. 


The wing patterns are found on page 3 of her pdf. document. I printed the page of wings on several pieces of vellum and then hot glued them to some old fashioned keys. 

This is the key that fit our cool looking padlock. I bought the padlock here

Here are the girls opening the padlock to retrieve the Golden Snitch.



They got it! And now we were ready to go and play some Quidditch! 


Check out our next post about how we created a super fun Quidditch game.
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