House of Little Tomato: A Very Harry Birthday Part 4: Class Lessons & the Troll in the Dungeon

This is Part 4 of the Harry Potter Party series.

"Part 3: Great Hall Sorting Ceremony" can be found HERE
"Part 2: Diagon Alley" can be found HERE.
"Part 1: Invitations & the Entry to Platform 9-3/4" can be found HERE.

After the Start of Term Announcements by Dumbledore, the classes began!

Potions Class

Each of the students were given a potion page as they entered the class. This page listed their potion ingredients, required equipment, and instructions.

Potions experiment instructions.

As the students filed into the Potions classroom, we had 'Professor Snape,' my brother, [edit: my Totally Awesome Brother, per his request 😜], read his speech (excerpt from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone - copied and printed onto a page for him to read, ex. "I can teach you to bottle fame, brew glory and even stopper death...").

The Potions class was held on our deck to allow for an easier cleanup. For the potion activity, we had created various potion bottles of ingredients and put additional jars and bottles of the ingredients for the students to use in their class.

Potions box and ingredients.

Each student each received their potion ingredients and began following the directions on the instructions.

Potions class.

The active ingredients of the potion were vinegar and baking soda. The final result was the cauldron bubbling over. A really fantastic result of the sequence of steps was that there was a plastic spider that was added to the cauldron before the bubbling reaction and in many of the cauldrons, the plastic spider began to escape (or appear to 'crawl') out of the cauldron when it bubbled over. The students loved to see their spiders crawl out of the cauldrons.

Cauldron bubbling over.

One thing I would change in the future would be to prepare more 'pre-measured' portions or smaller communal containers of ingredients to spread amongst the kids. As the kids were spread out across two tables, several of them had to wait for the 'dragon's blood' and 'warewolf hair' ingredients to be passed around in order to continue with their potion.

Charms Class

The students left Potions class, and went down to the basement for our Charms class. Each student grabbed a feather from the desk and sat down with their feather, course book, and wand.

Feathers for practicing 'Wingardium Leviosa.'

As professor McGonagall, I used THIS magic trick to make my feather levitate. Once I showed the class the spell, they each set to practicing the spell themselves. They referenced the page in their course book and the wand motion on the chalkboard to practice.

Charms chalkboard.

After the girls practiced for a few minutes, my brother (as Professor Quirrell ran into the room and screamed, "TROLL, IN THE DUNGEON!!!" and collapsed on the floor.

I asked the students if they wanted to be dismissed to their dormitories or fight the troll.

They ALL chose to fight the troll. 😋

Troll in the Dungeon

We took the girls out to the patio where we had a troll piñata. I'll be perfectly honest, I had zero interest in making a piñata. I was lazy and ended up finding a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle piñata on Amazon for cheap and just covered up the turtle details with Modge Podge and green tissue paper we had on hand, and used a black permanent marker to draw some face details.

We asked the students which spell was used to take the club from the troll to defeat him (the Wingardium Leviosa spell they just practiced was the answer). Then each student had a turn to hit the troll with the club. They used their scarves as blindfolds.

Defeating the troll in the dungeon.

Once the troll was defeated, the prizes inside the troll were bags of Gringotts gold for each girl.

Bags of Gringotts gold before they were stuffed into the troll piñata.

After we defeated the troll, the students returned to the Great Hall to celebrate with birthday cake and open presents.

The cake was designed to look like Hagrid's birthday cake for Harry, and made by fabulous Whisk & Measure bakery.