It seems every guide unit has a Harry Potter themed meeting or camp at some point! Here’s a few resources that were used this year by the 32nd Kanata South Guides – for more detail on what we did at our meeting, and tons more ideas, see our Harry Potter Night blog post.
Have you had a Harry Potter meeting? Got any great ideas, or have something to lend? Contact us and we will update this post with your items and/or downloads!
Physical Items for Borrowing
For now, I just have one item for borrow – a platform 9 3/4 shower curtain suitable for hanging over the doorway as your girls enter.
Downloadables
Some resources for downloading:
Recipe for Butterbeer – This recipe makes one cup at a time so girls can measure and make their own cup. TIP: make sure you use big cups – the whipped cream on top will expand as you stir and needs lots of space! ANOTHER TIP: Clear cream soda, if you can find it, makes more a more authentic looking butterbeer – but pink makes for a very pretty beverage. We used pink and thought it looked great!
Advanced Potion Making – This is an easy and pretty foam/volcano type science experiment suitable for all ages, that you can use for “potions class.” TIPS: Have one large pan (like a cake pan) for each girl, and then put a small cup in the middle – clear cups are best. Then have each girl mix their “potion” in their cup.
When the reaction is finished, you’ll want to dump out or rinse out the cups for re-use. We are lucky enough to have a kitchen with a sink where we could dump our potions, then re-use the cake pans and cups for the next incoming group. If you don’t have this at your meeting space, you’ll need a big bin or bucket where you can empty out the goop, and maybe have another bucket of plain water for rinsing.
The “potion” calls for Harry-Potter themed ingredients, which are:
- “Infusion of Wormwood” – regular vinegar
- “Moondew” – liquid food colouring
- ” Sopophorous bean’s juice” – clear dish soap
- ” Root of Asphodel” – baking soda
Wand Cores – We made wands at our meeting – we’d prepared them in advance from a variety of dowel thicknesses and lengths, drizzled with hot glue to create texture and a handle on one end. As part of this activity the girls drew from a bag of “wand cores” to discover what their wand core would be. This printable has several copies of different wand cores (more common ones are duplicated more often) – print them out and cut them into strips to create your own wand core discovery bag.
Harry Potter Trivia/Four Corners Game – This is several pages of Harry Potter trivia specifically about the four houses at Hogwarts. To use, hang the four Hogwarts house signs in the four corners of the room; the leaders read out a question and girls have to run to the corner they think is the right answer. You can play this just for fun or elimination style, where girls who are wrong are “out.” Best for guide or pathfinder age, as these girls are more likely to have read the books or seen the movies.
Seven Horcruxes Scavenger Hunt – We hid these seven items around the room before the girls arrived, then used this activity to “fill in” whenever a girl was done an activity early. She’d get this list and have to try to find the seven horcruxes hidden around the room. For each item, we just got dollar/party store versions (a rubber snake, a plastic ring, etc) and for Harry Potter we had a framed picture.
More Ideas
Get tons of ideas and a description of an actual Guide-level Harry Potter meeting here.