Harry Potter Day

For the month of October's theme day, I thought I'd go simple and do "Magic Day". However, it was suggested that I turn that into Harry Potter day so that residents could interact with a big cultural reference. I think next year I'll stick to "Magic Day".

The day did not go poorly, but it did not go as I would have liked considering how much work I put into it.

Today actually began yesterday with a showing of the first movie in the Harry Potter series. I pre-watched this recently to make sure all of my activities would be in line with the movie and so that anyone who watched it would have a base knowledge. I actually took notes. The problem is that I could not get the closed captioning to work for the movie and so the voices of the high pitched 11 years olds only sounded like "cheep-cheep-cheep". Worse, they were British 11 years old ("cheep cheep, tea-time, cheep") which means most of the dialogue was lost to the unfortunates watching.

Early this morning we started with a Harry Potter chat during which I passed around my copy of the first book and gave a synopsis of the story: there is a secret magical subculture of wizards non-magic people do not know about due to a ministry of magical cover-ups. The wizards go to their own school and everything is similar to but more interesting than our world. In this culture there are good wizards who protect non-magical people and bad wizards who wish us harm. Harry Potter is on the good side. I asked if anyone could think of such a wildly popular icon when they were growing up and they could not.

Although it wasn't addressed in the first movie, I renamed our gardening session into "herbology".

Then we came inside for decorating. I filled white balloons with helium and we used black markers to draw owls on them.


















After lunch the calendar pass-out was Quidditch paced. Then came the party.

The school in Harry Potter is called Hogwarts and there are four houses in Hogwarts. I represented them by color with crepe paper. When residents sat down I asked if they wanted "red, green, yellow, or blue" and then made a stole out of the paper. It was clipped together with a badge of the appropriate house.

Hufflepuff badge and stole

During my walks along my long driveway lately I've been picking up interesting twigs. These acted as wands and for each I had a description of it's special magical abilities. For example: " a reliable wand with consistency, reliable strength, and power. works with a wizard or witch with clear morals" and "supposed to be a protective wand, most happy when its owner has a clear head and pure heart. this wood is not known to have fallen into the hands of a dark witch or wizard".

 

Once everyone had read their description for their wand, I explained the colors they were wearing. For example, for all those wearing the red, Gryffindor, I told them their group values bravery, daring, nerve, and chivalry. We discussed if they thought their wand and house choices suited their personality. Next came snacks.

Butterbeer (vanilla ice cream, cream soda, butterscotch syrup)

peppermint toads, broomstick (pretzel sticks and string cheese)

Lastly we used a broom to knock a non-helium owl through one of the three Quidditch hoops.

My hope for the day was that afterwards the residents would be better able to connect with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My fear was that the day will make people confused. However I didn't anticipate that some people just like change and the owl decorations and snacks were fun regardless of the their relevance to J.K. Rowling.

after-work picture of my Harry Potter apron