Harry Potter Birthday Party

Looking for ideas for your child’s Harry Potter birthday party? Check out our Harry Potter themed party ideas. I get commissions for purchases made through the affiliate links in this post.

We recently celebrated Aiden’s 9th birthday. He chose a Harry Potter theme. Aiden has been in love with the books since he started reading them last year. He was even Harry Potter for Halloween. Wand making and potions were the highlights of the party. We also had spell books, an owlery, a golden snitch cake, and lots of Harry Potter inspired treats.

Sorting Hat

Aiden had 3 different ideas for sorting his friends into houses. He thought about creating a game where you toss something into one of four boxes each labeled with one of the four houses. This gives the kids some control over what house they end up in.

We also found an origami sorting hat and a sorting hat quiz online. He decided he liked the origami sorting hat the best. When it came time for the party, we both totally forgot about it.

It would be fun to use a talking sorting hat toy.

Wand Making

We included magic wand making at our Harry Potter birthday party. Aiden and I cut, sanded, and painted dowel rods before the day of the party. At the party, the kids each selected a wand to decorate.

Get the full tutorial for our Harry Potter magic wands.

Potion Making

Potions class was next after wand making. We made fizzy color changing potions with fruit juice. I’ll probably write up a full post on this activity as I slightly changed some of the ingredients to fit with our Harry Potter theme.

Here are the basics of what I used for the party:

Pint-sized mason jars
Grape juice
Baking soda
Lemonade powder (I like using the True Lemon brand because it doesn’t have extra ingredients or food coloring. Find it next to the powered drink mix and Kool-Aid.)
Sprinkles
Candy eyeballs
trays, baking dishes, or pie pans to protect your table from overflow
small containers or mini baking cups to hold ingredients for each child
paper straws to stir the potions (and to taste them)

Before the party, fill the mason jars half way with grape juice. Each child needs access to baking soda, lemonade powder, sprinkles, and candy eyeballs. I added a little of each ingredient to mini baking cups.

I put 2 mason jars on one tray or baking dish. I placed the ingredients on the tray for a pair of guests to share.

How to Make the Potions

Introduce the ingredients to the party goers. I tell them that they are creating color changing potions that will fizz. Start by adding a little bit of baking soda – enough to get some fizz. Watch for the color change. Then, add some lemonade powder. You’ll see another color change. Add as much or as little of each ingredient as you want.

You can drink your potions as long as you don’t add too much baking soda. When you add baking soda to fruit juice, you’ll see a chemical reaction. You get water, carbon dioxide (fizzy bubbles), and salt. If you add too much baking soda, your potion will taste too salty.

The color change happens because of the pH change in the grape juice.

Spell Books

I created my own Book of Spells that includes wand motions. I used wand motions from Kano’s Harry Potter Coding Wand and the Harry Potter Wizard Training Wand. For each spell, I also included pronunciations, a common name, and what the spells are used for. The end of the book has extra information and terminology relating to spells. There is even room for you to add your own spells.

Print out your own Harry Potter Books of Spells.

Golden Snitch Cake

I used a 3D ball cake pan from Wilton to make the golden snitch birthday cake. I covered it with a layer of cream cheese frosting (crumb coat first) and then a second layer of cream cheese frosting dyed buttercup yellow. I used the buttercup yellow to add the details of the golden snitch.

I sprayed the cake with Wilton Color Mist in gold to give a shimmering gold color.

Aiden wanted the snitch to have white edible wings. Wafer paper was the first thing that came to mind. I thought it would be light and thin. What I found were sugar sheets. They were thicker than I expected and didn’t stand up. I should have gotten skewers to hold the wings up properly. We decided the wings were closing instead.

Owl Cupcakes

We made owl cupcakes in addition to the golden snitch cake because we were afraid we would run out of cake. We had plenty of cake as it turned out, but it’s always nice to be on the safe side.

The owl eyes are made from golden Oreos and M&M’s. I piped frosting to create the feathers and beak.

Other Harry Potter Themed Party Food

In addition to the cake and cupcakes, we also had chocolate frogs, chocolate covered pretzel wands, jelly beans, butterbeer (I didn’t add ice – just ice cream, cream soda, butterscotch syrup, and whipped cream), chips, veggies, and dip.

Owlery

I thought it would be a fun idea to send an owl home with each guest. I created an owlery out of cardboard to house the owls during the party. The cardboard is covered with printed brick.

I bought most of the owls from Party City – there was a sale. I also picked up a few owls at Michael’s, JoAnn’s, and Hobby Lobby using coupons.

Each owl has a Daily Prophet newspaper (so they are paper owls). Each newspaper is tied with a different color string that matches a guest’s goodie bag.

Daily Prophet Thank You Scrolls

The Daily Prophet newspaper is really a thank you note. It reads, “Thank you for coming! We hope you had a magical time!”

I downloaded a Harry Potter Newspaper Template from Paperzip. After adding my thank you message, I printed it on resume paper. You could also use parchment paper.

Goodie Bags for the Party Guests

When guests arrived, Aiden handed everyone a gift bag. Each bag had a different colored string tied to the handle. At the end of the party, guests found their owl based on the string color on their gift bags. I mostly did this to make sure certain people got the pink or rainbow owls.

They used markers to write their names on the bags and decorate them however they wished. I collected the bags and saved them for later. At the end of the party, I added all of their goodies from the party.

Each bag had the following:

Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans – which were really just regular Jelly Belly jelly beans with about 10 Bean Boozled jelly beans. The real Bertie Bott’s jelly beans are a bit too pricey for me. I found the Christmas boxes of the Bean Boozled. I downloaded a free label for the Bertie Botts jelly beans from Swoon Food.
Chocolate Frogs – Learn how to make your own chocolate frogs.
Wands – See our wand making tutorial.
Book of Spells – Print your own Book of Spells.
Owl – The kids were really excited to take one home.
Thank you note – each owl had a Daily Prophet newspaper scroll

Everyone had a lot of fun at Aiden’s Harry Potter birthday party!

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