As a parent I am always trying to find new and exciting opportunities for my children. Whether it is treating them to see a new film at the cinema, visiting a local museum or attraction, or taking them to an array of local activities that are available within libraries, town centres or farms.
Whilst looking on the Waterstones website last month to book tickets for a special surprise for Roo I noticed that they were running a free Harry Potter Book Night. Knowing how much both Roo and Tigger enjoy Harry Potter I pencilled it onto our family calendar to attend.
Harry Potter Book Night
We are pleased to inform you that you have displayed a magical aptitude and may be applicable for a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
With an array of different activities for the children (and adults) to take part in the Harry Potter Book Night held lots of magical fun.
Thursday evening after school we visited our local Norwich Waterstones store which had been decorated throughout with lots of Harry Potter memorabilia from letters with owls delivering them, floating candles and fantastic signs directing us to the different activities that had been set up.
Sorting hat
The sorting hat was available to sort the children in to houses every half an hour. Roo and Tigger lined up to take part in the first round of sorting with Tigger going first (which is so unlike him). He wasn’t too impressed to find he had been sorted into Hufflepuff, however took his sticker and allowed Roo to take her turn. The sorting hat landed on a question mark allowing her to choose her own house, which of course was Gryffindor. Not wanting to see Tigger upset she swapped her sticker with his so that he could be part of Gryffindor instead of Hufflepuff.
Hunt the Golden Snitch
Hidden throughout the store were eight golden snitches, each with its own letter. Once collected they spelt out one of the spells from the Harry Potter stories. We had a bit of a problem finding our last golden snitch, but with a little bit of help we were able to locate it (we’d walked past it at least three times). This was Tigger’s favourite activity, happily walking around the store seeking out the golden snitches.
For correctly identifying the spell the children received a sweet treat, personally I would have loved this to have been a Harry Potter bookmark or similar, something corresponding to the evening rather than just sweets.
Harry Potter Quiz
The Harry Potter Quiz had us looking for seven different objects hidden around the store. Each object then had a question attached which required us to use our Harry Potter knowledge to answer.
Roo especially loved finding and answering the quiz questions with only a little bit of spelling help was needed from me.
Goblet of Fire
Roo’s favourite Harry Potter film is the Goblet of Fire, (I think she has a thing for Cedric Diggory – I can’t say I blame her) so when she spotted that they had one in store she immediately wanted to find out what she had to do.
Taking a piece of paper, you had to write your name on it, scrumble it up and then take steps away from the Goblet of Fire depending on your age (i.e. as Roo is 8yrs old, she had to take 8 steps), then throw your name to see if you could get it in the Goblet of Fire – sadly Roo’s throwing isn’t great so she didn’t quite manage to get her name in.
Make your owl postal owl
Every witch or wizard needs their own postal owl, so with the help of a template Roo and Tigger set about making their own version of Hedwig, complete with letter ready to be delivered.
A magical evening
We had a truly magical evening, Roo and Tigger looked super cute dressed as Harry Potter and Herimone Granger (if I do say so myself).
(Honestly Tigger did enjoy himself despite his grumpy face – I think he was sick of me taking photos)
The store was decorated beautifully and the staff were welcoming and helpful when we couldn’t find our last golden snitch. A wonderful free event that I really hope they will host again.
Do your little ones love Harry Potter?
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