After a breakfast of french toast, bacon and pumpkin juice in the Great Hall, classes started bright and early at 9am with Charms where students practiced wand-waving.
Charms - We sat down in the Great Hall to learn how to levitate a feather using the Wingardium Leviosa spell practicing our "swish and flick". The video above shows the daughter demonstrating what we learned. This was a wonderful idea that we came up with out of the blue. If you've ever owned a "Squirmle", or magic worm, then you'll understand the basic of how this works. (As professor, when I got to using the words with the movements I said it a few times and gave a queue for the daughter, who was in on it, to start levitating.)
Divination - After Charms we were led to the incense laden Divination class where we had tea and foretold the future using tea leaves. The more gruesome and depressing the better, of course! We gave extra house points for those who could name as many other forms of fortune telling as they could. We also enjoyed some sandwiches and cookies with our tea before heading to Potions class.
Potions - In Potions (or the kitchen) we played a couple different games. The daughter put together Snape's logic riddle from the forbidden corridor. She put out seven different sized/colored bottles filled with different concoctions. The group had to distinguish which bottles were poison (tap water), nettle wine (grape juice) and the potion to go forward and back (both were peppermint flavored water) based on the riddle below. First to solve the puzzle, and those who helped, received house points accordingly.
"Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,
Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,
One among us seven will let you move ahead,
Another will transport the drinker back instead,
Two among our number hold only nettle wine,
Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.
Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,
To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:
First, however slyly the poison tries to hide
You will always find some on nettle wine’s left side;
Second, different are those who stand at either end,
But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;
Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,
Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;
Fourth, the second left and the second on the right
Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight."
Can you guess the right bottles?
We also played a guessing game Slughorn-style with mystery filled test tubes. Each contained an ordinary edible and safe substance from the potion stores (in the pantry). 12 were liquids and 6 were powders. Each person got to examine, smell, and taste each before passing it on. Then, they would write there guess on a piece of paper. Some lost house points for guessing out loud (even when wrong), and others tried to finish off a tube or two before others got to it (ie. powdered sugar and pancake syrup). Surprisingly, no one got a perfect score. Though we had one who was very close only missing a couple. Bonus points were offered to those who were extra specific with their answers. Afterward, we let the kids make their own concoctions with the leftover ingredients from the test tubes while we prepared more food. I was even brave enough to taste a few. Lime Kool-aid/Honey/Lemon Juice/Ovaltine?! Eww!! (As you can see in this pic above, we were using "Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey" for our Fire Whiskey. We were serving the shots out of the same test tubes in the evenings. I liked the label so much, I didn't bother to cover it.)
Lastly, we sampled some Polyjuice Potion (more about this in future post) and demonstrated the magical "Repelio Charm" (not pictured, but you can find it at http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/lab/experiments/milk-color-explosion using milk, dish soap and food coloring on a plate) before heading to DADA.
Defense Against the Dark Arts - We held a Dueling Club Practice where Student were furnished with school wands sporting red or green crepe streamers on the business end. (Imagine those ribbons on sticks that gymnasts use for floor routines.) We let the students practice waving the wands so that the stream didn't tangle in knots. This class was probably the highlight for our younger students. They dueled to see who could disarm their opponent by deliberately tangling with each others "spell" streams and pulling the wand out of their opponent's hand. Seems the winner was the duelist with the longest streamer left at the end. :) I really wish I'd gotten a video of the shenanigans..
Later, the kids put together a pop quiz over various Hogwarts related trivia as we waited for the award ceremony and feast. They picked some tough questions! We had planned to use quills and parchment for the DADA pop quiz, but alas, I ran out of time getting things ready. We did have ink for our quills. Did you know you can use inkjet printer ink? You can buy the refill bottles. And, why not mix the colors to get blood red or emerald green.
End of Term Feast/House Cup Award - After classes we ushered our exhausted students back into the Great Hall for the House Cup Award Ceremony and End of Term Feast of Turkey and all the fixings. We tallied up the house points to find that Gryfinndor just barely beat Ravenclaw with Hufflepuff close behind, leaving Slytherin in last place. (But, I was determine to award extra house points to the birthday girl until her house, Ravenclaw, won.)
There were many more things we'd planned for that didn't happen that I wish had:
Wand Making - Since our event was cut short we were a bit crunched for time, we had to eliminate Wand Making that was supposed to be held before Charms. But, there are wonderful tutorials online for making all sorts of different wands from paper and hot glue, sticks, chopsticks, dowel rods, etc...
Broom Making/Flying Lesson/Quidditch - Weather didn't permit us having our Broom Making/Flying Lesson/Quidditch Match. Otherwise we had limbs that were cut from our overgrown trees and and acres full of knee high potential straw. I had some string and hose clamps for bundling options. We'd planned to tie an invisible string to one of the brooms as a setup. "Now hold your right hand over your broom and say, 'UP'." Our class clown was going to hit themselves in the face as Ron had done in the movie. Quidditch would also have been fun. My sis had even made us this wonderful Quidditch trunk above.
Care of Magical Creatures (Nifflers) - I ran out of time on Care of Magical Creatures class. We were going to set up our yurt as Hagrids Hut. And, I wanted to make a few stuffed nifflers that could hold coins in a pouch. Then, I would bring in an empty box with a hole chewed out of it and tell the students to find them in the yard. The nifflers would each have muggle money in various amounts. Winner would be the one who found the most talented niffler.
Death Day Party - We had also planned a "Death Day" party for our over forty birthday girl, but had a bit of a mishap with the tombstone shaped cake. (Left it in a glass pan on the stove top when a burner was accidentally turned on. POP!! Glass shards went flying everywhere. Darn pesky pixies! But, she got to enjoy some fungus peanuts (caramel popcorn and peanuts with milk and while chocolate drizzled over it), jello worms and deviled eyeballs during our end of term feast....and the heart attack that almost ensued when we heard the noise of the exploding glass cake pan!
Next up I'll share a little about some of the recipes we used and what we think of them.
