The Perfect Harry Potter Christmas Sleepover

I help run a Brownie unit every Friday and occasionally we go on whats called a pack holiday. This basically means that we go and stay in a haul/house for a night or two and do some activities. For our pack holiday we decided that we would have a Harry Potter Christmas themed sleepover and we named our camp Christmas at Hogwarts. It was such a fun weekend and it was so good that I wanted to share some of the bits we did at our sleepover so that you could do this with your Brownies/Guides or you could even host your own Harry Potter Christmas Party. Also, these ideas don’t have to be just for Christmas, most of these would work all year round.

Sorted into your chosen House

Now we all know that the most popular house is Gryffindor (which btw is my house!), this is because our three beloved characters belong to it, so if you let the kids pick their house most of them are going to be choosing Gryffindor for the most obvious of reasons! So what we did is we made identical cupcakes, however, they aren’t quite as identical as you think! Inside each cupcake has a different colour middle, one was red, another green, another blue and the last being yellow. Each colour corresponds to a different house (red being Gryffindor, green being Slytherin, blue being Ravenclaw and yellow being Hufflepuff). We got the Brownies to take a big bite into their cake and then look at the colour inside, this would therefore define your house. I felt that this was the fairest way of doing it and that every Brownie had an equal chance at getting into their favourite house! However, to make it slightly more special, we kind of made a sorting hat! This was made out of paper-mache and the girls faces could not believe that we had a sorting hat! They were honestly in pure shock and it was so wonderful to see! It did take a while to make, but it was so worth it when seeing the girls faces! You could probably buy one on Amazon, but if you are like us and didn’t have a big budget then making one is the best option!

Harry Potter Bags

We were making quite a lot at this sleepover so when we were deciding what we wanted to do with the Brownies, the first thing I said was that we needed bags so they could carry all their stuff in and the first place I headed to to find some inspiration was Pinterest and it did not let me down! I found a Harry Potter themed bag that was perfect for the occasion!

What you will need:

• A brown paper bag
• Coloured pens/pencils/crayons
• Depending on the age and artistic ability stencils of the glasses, hair and scarf.

How to make:

This is such a simple yet effective look for a Harry Potter bag and it’s also not a really hard design for young ones to do! Using stencils (or if you are like my niece Lily draw it free hand!) draw the outline of all the individual items and then colour in! If I were making this for myself, I would probably use coloured paper as I think that this would look better than colouring it in, but colouring in is easier for kids!

Wands

Every Wizard needs a wand, now we don’t have an Olivanders shop nearby, so we had to make our own!

What you will need:

• A stick of some form (this could be a pencil, a twig you find, or you could use bits of bamboo which is what we did)
• Glue gun
• paint in a variety of colours

 How to make:

Heat up the glue gun and using the glue twist some around the stick, this will create the pattern on your wand. Do this as much or as little as you like!  Once you have done this let your wand dry (probably over night so that the glue is definitely dry). Once the glue is dry you can start painting your wand to the colours of your choosing.

Golden Snitch Decoration

Incase you weren’t aware, the snitch is the little tiny golden ball that has wings. This ball is used in the Quidditch matches and Harry Potter has to seek the Golden Snitch. Every since watching the film I thought how cool it would be to have one of these, so we decided to make them for the girls.

What You Will Need:

• A gold bauble
• Gold paper
• White paper
• Coloured pens/pencils
• Prit sticks
• Some form of glue (we used double sided tape, but I would probably use a glue gun if I were to do this again)

How to:

1. Cut out a 2 feather shapes from your gold paper (use a stencil if possible)
2. Cut out a 2 slightly larger feather shapes that your gold ones can sit on top of
3. Colour in the white paper to your desired colour, my favourite ones were the ones that had coloured in their paper black as it made the gold wings stand out more
4. Stick your feathers together with Prit stick
5. Using the double sided tape stick your feathers either side of the snitch.

Quidditch

One of the most loved things about Harry Potter is the Quidditch matches! It’s so awesome to see them all flying around and I reckon we all wish we could fly on our broom sticks! We unfortunately don’t have the magic of flight, but we can still play Quidditch.

What you will need:

• 1 golden snitch
• 4 large hoops
• 2 small hoop
• something to tie the hoops up with (we used cable ties as they were easy, however string works just as well)
• 3 red balloons
• 3 blue balloons

How to play:

Firstly, you need to blow up the balloons. The blue balloons are the equivalent of the Quaffle whereas the red balloons are the equivalent of the Bludgers. With the hoops you will need to tie 2 large hoops and one small hoop on either side of your pitch, we had a marquee up when we played, so we were able to tie them onto that, however you could tie your hoops onto a curtain pole (this version of Quidditch can be played inside and nothing will get broken (hopefully!) but I would move breakables just in case!). Before the players arrive hide your Golden Snitch somewhere where they are unlikely to find it. We hid it in the garden surrounding the marquee to make it more difficult for the girls, if you were playing inside you could hide your snitch in a different room.

There are 7 players on a team in Quidditch (however you can change it if need be! We had 8 in a team). You need three Chasers, two Beaters, one Keeper and one Seeker per team. The Keeper guards the goal post, while the Chasers use the blue balloons to try and score goals. The beaters are kind of like defences as well and use the red balloons to try and stop the other team from scoring, they can throw these at each other to try and stop them. The seeker has to try and find the snitch before the other team.

The game starts with placing all the balloons in the middle and the players standing by their goal posts. Once they start the seekers run off to find the golden snitch and the rest have to do their jobs, so the Chasers try to score goals, the keepers and beaters try to stop them and so on. The game finishes when one of the teams finds the Golden Snitch. My Brownies loved this game and wanted to keep playing, however we had so many other activities to do that there was no way we could keep playing!

Harry Potter Biscuits

You can’t have a sleepover without some food crafts! An easy craft for little ones is decorated biscuits! We found some simple designs online and gave it a go!

What you will need:

• Rich Tea Biscuits
• Ready to roll white icing
• Harry Potter themed cutters
• Writing icing
• Icing Sugar
• Water

How to make:

Using a rolling pin, role out the ready to roll icing to about half a centimetre thick. Once you have, choose your cutter, the cutter will cut out the correct shape, however it will also leave an indentation of a design. Mix the icing sugar and water together, this will form the glue to stick the icing to the biscuit. Glue your biscuit and icing design together then with the writing icing fill in the indentation space to make it stand out more. ENJOY!

Graduating from Hogwarts

After finishing our weekend we finished with a graduation ceremony where everyone received their scroll and their certificate (I made both!). I’m honestly  super proud of how the certificate came out. I think they look pretty official if I do say so myself! 😂

And that concludes (most of) the weekends shenanigans! I had such a fun time doing this with my Brownies and I think they had a good time too! Like I said these aren’t specifically Christmas, but you could make them Christmassy I guess? You could do any of these crafts all year round if you wanted to bring some magic into your life! If you make any of these I would love to see them!

Thanks to the Brownies for firstly a great weekend and secondly letting me take photos of your creations! The girl featured in the photos is my niece who has featured on the blog and in videos multiple times, other photos of the Brownies were taken, but for protection they are not featured in either blog photos or videos.