Book Review:
I am a huge Harry Potter fan, and at this point, none of my kids were into it. L My seven-year-old wanted to watch the movie, so I said we had to read the book first, and then we could have a Harry Potter party. I’m sneaky that way. It was a little frustrating reading it to him, because he had a billion questions and when we missed reading for a few nights, he would end up confused about who everyone was. But we did finish in the end and he liked it. For the party, we invited kids aged 5-10 to come. Everyone had to come dressed in a Harry Potter outfit – we ended up with quite a few Hermiones and even a Voldemort.
Discussion Questions:
1. Which magical subject would you be most excited to study at Hogwarts, and why?
2. Which of the Hogwarts houses do you think the sorting hat would place you in? Why?
3. If you could pick one of the many animals described in this text to be your pet (including Mrs. Norris, Scabbers, Hedwig, Norbert, Fang, or Fluffy) which would you choose and why? What do people's choices in pets reveal about them?
4. Do you agree with Hermione that "friendship and bravery" are "more important things" than "books" or "cleverness" (16.288-89)? Why or why not?
5. Who is the most evil person in this book? What makes a person/character evil?
6. Who do you think the most courageous character is? How is courage defined in this text?
7. If you looked into the Mirror of Erised, what would you see? What do you think Dumbledore actually saw when he looked into the Mirror?
8. How would Harry be different if Dumbledore had decided that he should be raised in the magical world, instead of with the Dursleys? Did Dumbledore make the right decision?
(Questions from shmoop.com)
Food:
We ate pizza and chocolate frogs (you can buy a mold on Amazon)
Activities:
We sorted everyone with the sorting hat, painted wands, played Quidditch in the back yard, and then watched the movie. For Quidditch, I hung up hula-hoops on either side of the yard. I colored a ping pong ball in with a yellow sharpie for the snitch and hid it in the yard. I used two soft black balls as bludgers and a red soccer ball as the quaffle. I divided the kids into two teams and gave them positions. They had to throw the red quaffle through the hula hoops to score points and if they got hit with a black ball, they had to sit down for thirty seconds. The game ended when the seekers found the snitch. We were able to play a couple of times. By the end the game turned into a huge dodgeball match: my husband vs. all the kids. It was pretty hilarious.