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.