Every Christmas my family picks a new theme to center our Christmas around.

This year it was Harry Potter and

IT WAS SOOOOOOO MUCH FUN.

This post is for our Minute to Win it Harry Potter Games.

I don't know what was more fun, putting together the party, or actually having the party.

I ended up with so many ideas that I had to store them in one place.

Here is a link that can connect you to all of my ideas!

Now let's get started!

Harry Potter Minute to Win it Games:

Every Harry Potter party must include some sort of sorting to create teams.

You can do this two ways :

A tri-wizard tournament.

A competition for house cup.

I went back and forth on this, but in the end I decided to have it be a house cup with the teams of Slytherin vs Gryffindor.

It's up to you to decide.

Here's how we did it.

I printed everyone's name in Harry Potter font on a piece of paper.

Then I aged the paper with a wet cotton ball, a brown Crayola marker and a black Crayola marker. I carefully tore around all the names and then added some more black coloring around the edges to give them a burnt look.

Then I placed all the names in my Triwizard cup that I bought at Target. Technically this is not how it was in the movie, but no one seemed to mind. They got the idea.

We picked a captain for each team and the captains pulled the names out of the cup.

Another idea would be to pull the names out of a sorting hat, OR better yet you could put the hat on each child's head and sort each child into a house.

Here are two different scoreboards that you can use, depending on whether you have two teams or three.

I think that for practical purposes two teams are the most efficient.

House cup (two teams) version:

Triwizard (three teams) version:

Now that the teams have been sorted,
let the fun begin!

I awarded the team that won each competition 25 points.

Print a copy of all the books (above) for each team and then cut them out.

Mix up the books so that they are out of order. Lay them upside down in front of each team. When you say go each team has to put the books in the proper order. Sounds easy, right? Our biggest Harry Potter fan got two of the books mixed up so the other team won.

25 points to the team that gets the books in order first!

Make as many copies of the pixies as you would like. I made 4 copies. Cut out the pixies and spread them out on the ground. You can cut out several layers at a time if you're are careful.

The team that gathers the most pixies wins.

25 points to the team that finds the most pixies!

For this one I had them make slime.

This is where my trip to the dollar store in October really came in handy. I gave each team a cauldron, a glass of liquid starch (in the creepy hand glass), a bottle of white glue, a bottled water, one 1/4 cup measuring cup, some neon food coloring, and a recipe.

Each team had to create the recipe with what they had. They had to figure out that for a 1/2 cup they needed to use 1/4 measuring cup twice.

They also had to find something to stir it with. We were in the backyard, so they found the nearest stick.

One team did the recipe out of order and found that it was difficult to mix. Unfortunately they lost, although their slime eventually came together.

Here is the printout for the recipe:

25 points to the team who makes their confusing concoction first!

Check out my latest Minute to Win it Game, Star Wars

I had some fun with this one. This is where that trip to the dollar store paid off again. I had bought some plastic feathers, witch hat headbands, and had some leftover eyeball eye glasses from my Mad Eye Moody project.

I glued the plastic feathers onto some pens and covered them with white tape (above). Then I had a member from each team put on the witch's hat and the glasses. They used the feather pens to write with.

When I said go they had to turn the paper over and guess the patronus of everybody at the party.

All the team members could help them. The team that got the most right in a minute won.

For you I have a printout of all of the Patronesses from Harry Potter. You could use that if it's too much trouble to find out the Patronus for everyone at your party.

Harry Potter Patronuses Answers

25 points to the team that gets the most patronesses in a minute!

For this challenge I went to the thrift store and bought each team yellow shirts and ear muffs. I could only find one ear muff (we live in Las Vegas) so I used some headphones.

Before we started a member of each team had to put on the yellow shirt with the ear muffs.

Then I gave each team:
-a glob of terracotta Crayola air dry clay
-three paper leaves
-a small pot with a label
-a piece of chalk
-instructions (see below)

The first team done wins.

Look how cute our Mandrakes turned out. The teams thought that they were supposed to name their Mandrake, so on the labels they wrote Phillip and Logan. My grandson thought that his team's Mandrake should be named after him.

Here is a printout for the instructions:

25 points to the team that finishes their mandrake first!

This awesome idea came from Pop Goes the Page

Mandrake made ease

Give each team a roll of aluminum foil, or set out an aluminum foil for the teams to fight over.

You can either tell each team what animal that they need to create, or you can have them come up with their own creation.

Here's some examples;

Here are several ways to pick a winner:

-The team with the most recognizable animal wins.

-The team that finishes fasted wins

-The team where everyone finishes their own transfiguration animal first wins.

25 points to the team that gets their transfigurations done first!

Each team got one wand (we made the wands) and a package of 15 glow stick necklaces (Walmart).

The team members had to make the necklaces glow and attach them together in a circle.

Then they had to toss the necklace from 10 feet away to the person with the wand while saying the words "Wingardium Leviosa". The person with the wand had to catch the necklace.

The team that caught them all first won.

(Unfortunately I did not get pictures.)

It was a lot of fun!

25 points to the team that catches all of their charms first!

Minute to Win it Style Quidditch

Each team got a poster board with three holes in it (see picture above) for a goal post. I just hand drew mine but here's an example below. You could print it at Office Max if you wanted.

The person holding the poster (the Keeper) cannot move his feet, but he can move the poster. We had a team member from the opposite team stand by each goal post to make sure that the Keeper did not move his feet.
If he did move his feet his team lost 10 points.

Each team got 2 ping pong balls (guaffles) to throw through the goals. They had to throw them from 10 feet away. Every ping pong ball (guaffle) that they got through the goal was 10 points. The person who was keeping an eye on the Keeper kept score for their team.

Each team had a Seeker. The Seeker's job was to find the Snitch that was hidden in somewhere in the yard.

(I have a couple of Snitches that I made for my Christmas Tree.)

Click here to see how I made them.

The first team to find the Snitch got 150 points added to their score.

The game ended when the Snitch was found.

This was a lot of fun. Just a tip for your goal posts. One of our goals tore, so you could reinforce the back with duct tape. You could also make it out of foam core so that it's a little sturdier.

Add all of the quidditch points to each of the team's score. The team with the most points wins!

I made these cute awards for the winning team. I used m&m minis and glue gunned some silver paper around the base and glue gunned the medallion to the top.

I have also done trophies on the top of Toblerones.