Introduction

 Hello and welcome to the blog! This site is dedicated to explaining in detail how my friend and I planned and ran a Harry Potter-themed backyard summer camp. Hopefully this will be a helpful resource to those hoping to pull off a similar event, or simply entertaining for anyone else who come across this blog!

During 4 weeks in June and July 2013, my friend Georgia and I hosted two 2-week sessions of Harry Potter Camp in my backyard (see website here: harrypottercampelmhurst.blogspot.com ). This was a follow-up in many ways to a Percy Jackson Camp I ran the previous year that was a lot of fun. From the beginning, our goal was to promote reading through the experience of a summer camp that would immerse kids in the world of the book.

Harry Potter Camp was in many ways very different from Percy Jackson Camp, and although we did learn a few things from the first time, we had to start from scratch with the activities and material. Luckily we were able to borrow a lot of ideas from people who shared their own expertise on the internet--the Harry Potter series has inspired a lot of creativity! Various websites that were directly used will be included throughout this blog, and at the end there will be a master post of all the websites that we used in our research.

The posts are organized by subject on the right of the page, or you can click "older posts" at the bottom as you read to go through them all in order. You can also use the search bar on the right. Thanks for visiting this site; enjoy!

Preparations

About the week before the first session of camp, I started having friends over to my house every day of the week to help prepare the final supplies for Harry Potter Camp. The following are the things that we made ahead of time and overviews of how we made them.

Wands

These were pretty straightforward. I bought wooden dowel rods from Michael's in two similar widths, used an electric sander to taper the ends a bit (not too sharp though), and spray painted them all with a variety of colors such as bronze, copper, gold, silver, and black. I blended some of the colors to make each wand unique, and toned down the sparkle of most of them with the black. They looked really good, but I'm not sure if all the shimmery-ness was over the top or fine, and if I had had brown spray paint on hand I would have tried it. You could also use wood varnish, but I was short on time.

Then my friends all brought hot glue guns, and everyone just got free reign to create deigns on the wands with glue. Once it hardened, I had metallic permanent markers and we colored on top of the glue. They turned out so great! Afterwards, we pulled up the wand information on Pottermore and each wandmaker wrote the specifications of their wand on a slip of parchment paper and tied it in a scroll around the wand.

Resources: This is instructions for making wands from paper! And shows the hot-glue technique we used. http://summercampprogramdirector.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Make-an-awesome-Harry-Potter-wand-from-a-sheet-of-.pdf

Books

We hand-made potions and spellbooks for each student, and it was a serious pain in the butt! Not recommended if you have to make more than about 10-15. I had written and borrowed potions and spells to put in the books, which we had to print out page by page. (I can't include the actual books because Google Docs screws up my Word formatting but the potion instructions can be found on the "Potions" post.) Then we used colored cardstock and yarn to create a simple cover for the "Standard Book of Spells Grade 1" and cut out pieces of cardboard for the covers of the potions book. The potions books were way more complicated because the cardboard had to be covered in scrapbook paper and lined with colored paper, and then the pages were hot-glued in, which was not a long-term book binding solution.

They looked cool though, because each book had different patterned paper for the covers.
Resources: Making felt-covered books would also be cool! --> http://www.bluecricketdesign.net/2012/03/harry-potter-party-by-just-another-day-in-paradise.html

Goblin War Documentary

This was an intense afternoon of filming with some of our friends and my siblings who volunteered to act in a homemade documentary for History of Magic class! It was actually a lot of fun, although I didn't have a very clear idea of what I wanted them to do most of the time, but this was one of the things I personally am most proud of that came out of Harry Potter Camp! Watch the video on the "History of Magic" blog post page.

T-shirts

We screen printed by hand all of the camp tshirts, which were black and said "Harry Potter Camp 2013" on the front in silver letters. On the back we used printable iron-on things with each kid's house. The houses were ones Georgia and I made up, see the "Sorting" post for more info about that.

Letters

For each session of camp, we drove to each kid's house the afternoon/evening before camp started with their acceptance letters, which were taped to their doors. For the second session, I found the awesome idea to use white balloons with Hedwig drawn on them as delivery owls. We also included some important items in the envelopes besides their letters: supply lists, Gringott's vault keys, and train tickets. Green glitter would also be a fun idea as "floo powder" to transport them to Diagon Alley! We sealed the letters with crayon wax and candle wax (candle wax works better), different each time, and we used Georgia's Hufflepuff seal from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
Resources:
Ticket: http://www.ericnielson.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/ticket-to-hogwarts.png
Supply lists (by me): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_YYwKCxFE1vZlo2R0VYOGFnR3M/edit?usp=sharing

Decorations

For camp, we basically had 4 classrooms: 2 inside and 2 outside, and all the classes took place once of these places. More classes ended up being inside than I necessarily would have liked, but it was often hot and buggy out, so it helped keep the kids cool.

 

The main classroom, which doubled as a general meeting place for camp each morning, a storage area for kids' supplies, as well as housing the Owlrey, was in the basement. This was mainly the Spellwork and History of Magic classroom, but some other classes ended up in here too. For decoration, we got some corrugated paper printed with large stones from Amazon, and a "gothic mansion wallpaper" wall hanging from Party City. Together, these worked well to add a castle/dungeon feel to the room while also completely covering some things that the kids didn't need to see, like a large cabinet full of craft supplies along one wall. We also used some various hanging decoration that were bought on Amazon, such as suits of armor and some torches. We had three long plastic tables in total, and one was in this room as a desk for 4-5 kids to work at during class.

 

The Owlery was also in this room, it was a small castle tent, and that was where the kids were supposed to keep their pets during camp, although the little stuffed animals were often taken out to play with and lost for a couple days.

The other indoor classroom was the Divination room, which was a tiny playroom on the second floor of my house. We rearranged the furniture in there and stuffed it full of beanbag chairs and pillows. There were some shelves in the room already, so we put all the divination and astronomy equipment on them. We also got 2 black lights for the lamps just for fun, although the window had to be covered in a tablecloth for them to work, and that made it even hotter and stuffier in there, so they weren't used a ton. There was also a mini tent to set up for astronomy because the little star projector we had didn't make it to the ceiling. It was a very tight space, but that was kind of realistic to the actual divination room!

On the stairs leading up to the Divination room on the second floor of my house, I already had a lot of art pictures hung, but I added one of those images that change when you walk past them as a "moving portrait." It was a girl who turned into a zombie that I got from Party City and it was really good quality. I got several remarks, especially from counselors, that they were admiring the art as the walked up the stairs and then suddenly the girl turned into a zombie!
I also ordered a wall decoration of creepy paintings from Party City, and hung those on the stairs to the basement and in the Spells classroom.

The outdoor "classrooms" were just tables set outside under Georgia's canopy-tent thing or an umbrella. Generally we found that classes held under the canopy while it was on the grass proved to be gnat-filled classes, which was not fun.

Outside we also the broomshed, which was the little playhouse where we stored the broomsticks and Quidditch balls and hoops, and of course the Quidditch field itself, and we had to mark the boundary lines with powdered lime each time we played. For more details, go to the "Quidditch" post.

We also really wanted the kids to have "common room" areas where they could hang out and decorate a space for house pride! But in the end we didn't really have any space, and there wasn't any free time in the schedule that they could be sitting in there reading or something, so we didn't use them. It would have been useful to have some sort of shelving or cubbies for the kids to store their stuff because they sort of left papers lying everywhere or shoved into piles in the corner, which caused lots of things get lost or left behind at the end of camp.

Diagon Alley

Diagon Alley

When the kids arrived at my house, we had Diagon Alley set up on my driveway, which extends along the side of my house all the way to the back, although Diagon Alley didn't go all the way to the back, only along the side of the house. Lined up on both sides of the driveway were 5 shops and Gringott's Wizarding Bank at the end.

Gringott's

The bank was a plastic play castle from my backyard. Inside stood a volunteer "goblin" who took each camper's vault key when they came up to the bank and checked the number tied to the key. There were as many silver spray-painted shoe boxes in the bank as kids, each numbered to match their vault keys. Inside the boxes were equal numbers of Galleons (plastic coins we got on Amazon) for the kids to purchase supplies with. The supplies were priced so that everyone had about 20 Galleons left for a later expedition to Hogsmeade.

Madam Malkin's

One card table was Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions, which had everyone's t-shirts on them (without the House crests ironed on the back yet). The kids stopped here, Madam Malkin pretended to measure them with a tape measure, and then gave them the size they had asked for when they turned in their registration paperwork.

Potage's

The cauldron shop had stacks of plastic cauldrons and for the second session, glass phials. I would have liked to have an apothecary stop, but we pretty much ended up buying the potions ingredients the day before potions class so it didn't work out.

Flourish and Blott's

This shop was set up in a little castle play tent that I got on Amazon. Inside were quill pens (gel pens with large colorful feathers glued on), stacks of parchment tied up with yarn, required textbooks, and cheap binders. The binders were meant for amassing papers from classes throughout camp, but that didn't work out very well in terms of hole-punching logistics and the organizational abilities of small children. I think folders would work much better, or even file folders. Keeping papers organized was a serious issue both sessions of camp.

Magical Menagerie

This table was covered in small stuffed animals that kids could choose from to be their pets at Hogwarts. I ordered them from StuffedSafari.com, which has a great range of creatures and pretty good prices, but I ordered a bit late and there was an issue where a couple animals were out of stock at the last minute which almost caused none of them to arrive in time! The owls were on the expensive side, so we had a large variety of creatures including owls, toads, and cats but also frogs, mice, bats and turtles.

Ollivander's

At this table we used an extra cauldron and put all the wands in it. I really wanted to use lights in the cauldron to make it look like the wand chose the wizard, but we didn't get it hooked up in time for the first session so we used a blindfold. For the second session, we did use lights, but they were very hard to see because it was light out, and there was so much going on in Diagon Alley that the kids didn't completely understand that they couldn't just pick a wand, especially the ones who hadn't read the books. They also got a chance to see all the wands an potentially feel disappointed with the one that "picked" them, so overall I think the blindfold was actually better in practice.
We also sold two types of brooms at Ollivander's because we didn't have a sign for the broom shop. Technically first years cant have their own brooms and we didn't even end up sending the brooms home with them (they were just old mop handles my dad had lying around), but it kind of served a purpose for our storyline for camp, but I will get to that later.

As an additional note, the signs for all the shops were designed and colored by hand by my lovely sisters, and they turned out soo well!

Platform 9 3/4

After purchasing their supplies at Diagon Alley, the kids went through the side door which had a "King's Cross Station" sign on it. Then they turned into the front hall, where the signs 9 and 10 were taped on either side of the front door, which was open and had brick-printed paper over the doorway. We cut a slit up the middle of the paper so the kids could run through it and onto the front porch, which was the platform. There they handed over their tickets and did a short trivia game while they waited for everyone to finish shopping.

Then the Hogwarts Express set off. Basically the counselors led the kids around the block. On the way down we did "Indian Run" (but we didn't call in that), which is where you have a ball and you pass it over your head to the person behind you as you walk or run. On the way back we played "Red Light, Green Light" with "Stupefy" and "Rennervate."

Sorting

When the campers got back to the house with the Hogwarts Express, they dropped off their supplies and lined up in alphabetical order to file into the Great Hall, which was two little picnic tables and large chairs in a row at the front for the counselors.

We borrowed a Sorting Hat from a friend, and during the second session we attempted to make him sing a song by holding a cell phone on speakerphone under the hat while a few people sang a sorting song that Georgia wrote on their end of the phone from inside the house. However, this was hard to hear even for the person holding the hat, although the kids were very curious about where the song was coming from (they figured it out pretty quickly). We had pre-sorted the kids mostly based on age and number of books they had read to try to make the houses even, so similarly when the hat was placed on each camper's head, Georgia was on the other end of the phone inside, watching from the window and calling out their houses. Again, not loud enough for anyone but the person being sorted to hear. Once each kid was sorted they received a bandanna the color of their house to wear during Quidditch/for house pride.
After everyone was sorted we served cauldron cakes and dragon blood juice (fruit punch) and handed out schedules for their first day of classes.

A note on the houses: we decided to create different houses for camp than the ones in the book so that there would be no hurt feelings about being in Hufflepuff or Slytherin, etc. The explanation for this is that we are at The Chicagoan Hogwarts Academy ("Chicogwarts" as the kids called it) and not in Scotland. Georgia and I went to a lot of effort to design these houses, but it was super fun! Essentially we set certain parameters to make them similar in basis to the ones in the book, so we started with four colors, purple, blue, green, and orange, and then gave them secondary colors of silver or gold, and started coming up with animals. We also chose to stick with the idea of each house representing one of the four elements, and we also arbitrarily decided to choose only horned animals as well. Then we spent a long time coming up with suitable names, using latin and other languages for inspiration, and assigned each house a pretty generic positive trait. Finally I designed and drew the crests in Photoshop, which I am pretty proud of! The results are as follows:

Langier - Orange and Silver - Rams - Perseverant - Fire element

Tarandarus - Green and Gold - Stags - Peaceful - Earth Element

Noctura - Purple and Silver - (Horned) Owls - Helpful - Air Element

Esseldor - Blue and Gold - Narwhals - Carefree - Water Element

For each session, we only used 2 of the houses because we barely had enough kids for 2 Quidditch teams, much less 4. It also made it easier to keep track of house points, which were kept track of in vases I got at the dollar store and some of those small decorative glass stones. We made each stone worth 5 points the first session and 2 points the second; it depends on how many points you give out, because I kept forgetting about them!

As part of our History of Magic class, I wrote a history of the founders of the Chicagoan Hogwarts to tell the campers in the second session. Here is the story:

Emiliana Esseldor, Nessandra Noctura, Tarmog Tarandarus, and Lentero Langier were 4 friends who had attended the original Hogwarts in Scotland together and were all Hufflepuffs. They were pioneers in America as the Midwest was being settled, and they decided that wizards who settled there like they had needed a school for their children that was closer than the established wizarding schools on the east coast, such as the Salem Institute of Witchcraft. Like the founders of Hogwarts, they created 4 houses based on the characteristics they found most important (all of which can potentially be placed under the Hufflepuff umbrella due to their childhood house).

However, the friends suffered difficulties in later years. When Nessandra Noctura married Tarmog Tarandarus, Emiliana Esseldor's heart was broken and she returned to Britain where she served as the head of Hufflepuff House for many years. Not long after Esseldor left, Lentero Langier left the school and headed for the Wild West and was never heard from again. 

Noctura and Tarandarus were left to run the school, which they did until the mysterious death of Tarandarus. Noctura almost went insane from grief and the fate of the school was in question. Then Esseldor returned to nurse her old friend back to health, in an act that emulated the values of the other founders of the school: peacefulness, helpfulness, and perseverance. The two women continued to run the school until they both died of very old age, each within hours of the other.

When I told the kids this story in class, I especially emphasized how the traits of all the houses were important in saving the school when it was in crisis, which was kind of cheesy but fun!