Little Tomato is a giant fan of a certain book series with a wizard boy. Thus began our ‘rabbit hole’ of wizard themed parties. A child asking for a HP themed birthday party? Normal. A child specifying that she wants THIS YEAR’S birthday based on year one… and each of her subsequent birthday parties as the subsequent books? Oh dear.

We didn’t hold much stock on her keeping this up. Kid’s interests change quickly. But the next year’s birthday rolled in, and she wanted a ‘Year 2’ party. Thus we came up with a couple of crafts and a game for the girls to play that were all inspired by the events in the second wizard book![/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Wizard School Party Craft 1: Herbology

Mandrake Seedlings Supplies:

  • Mini Plastic Babies – ‘Baby Shower’ party supplies – Example HERE
  • Craft Paint (and primer if you want to be thorough)
  • Faux Greens – floral section of craft supply store
  • Hot Glue Gun / Glue Sticks
  • Yarn / Twine Scraps

Mandrake Seedling Making Process:

  • Use the hot glue gun to glue faux leaves to the doll heads & yarn scraps to the doll feet. This doesn’t need to be cleanly done, mandrakes are lumpy!
  • You can also drag the glue strings past the yarn to make it look more stringy and ‘root-like’.
  • Cover the doll body in hot glue to give the body a more wrinkly lumpy look.
  • Once the glue is dry, cover the bodies and yarn in primer (optional), then brown paint.
  • You can finish with a Mod Podge or top coat if desired. As they’re just going to be stuck into planter’s soil, a finish coat isn’t really necessary.
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Mandrake Party Craft Supplies:

  • The ‘mandrake seedlings’ made from the instructions above.
  • Mini terracotta pots
  • Bowl
  • Spatula
  • Soil / potting mix- we used coir from HERE, as we had it on-hand for our seed-starts.
  • Plastic snack bags (optional)
  • Earmuffs (optional)

Process:

Each student received a mini pot and Mandrake seedling.
  • We had a bowl of the coir with a spatula ready for the students to spoon it into their pots.
  • Ask the students to pot their new seedlings in it’s own pot, making sure to cover their Mandrake head with soil. They don’t want to hear it scream when it gets bigger!
  • We had a permanent marker available for the girls to write their names on their pots, or draw a little design on them. As the pots were so small, there wasn’t much surface to decorate. In retrospect, a larger pot may have been more fun to add a pot decorating aspect to the craft.
  • We had plastic baggies handy for the students to transport their finished pots home without a mess of soil in their parent’s cars. It wasn’t a necessary supply… but definitely an appreciated one!
A random side note: We have a couple of plastic bowls that we designate for crafts only – we make slime, pour glitter, mix science experiments, and now also put planting soil in them. While we wash them out thoroughly after each use, I still prefer not to use them for food. It is worth mentioning this, as my brother laughed at my note on the bowl that reads, “For Crafts / Not for Food” written into the side of it. We did NOT think the kids were going to try to eat soil… it was just to remember that the BOWL was not for food use. 😋

Wizard School Craft 2: Pixie Jars

Supplies

  • Mason Jars
  • LED tea lights
  • Pixie image, printed
  • Mod Podge
  • Glitter
  • Craft paintbrushes
  • Laminating sheets (optional)
  • Bowl

Prep Work

  • Images of pixies can be found on Pinterest easily – you can decide if you want a silhouette or a detailed image.
  • Print multiple images per page (I fit 9 to a page) and cut them out. For this step, I took a silhouette image of a pixie and used the Silhouette machine to cut it out for me on a heavier weight blue cardstock (Bazzill Paper).

The most common way to put the pixies in the jar is to print the pixies on a standard weight paper and Mod Podge the image on the inside wall of the jar. However, this method can get quite messy; the paper can get crumply and can rip easily when it gets too saturated in the paste, and it can be more difficult to position the way you want it.

I took a different route.
  • I laminated the pixies and then cut the laminated pixies into blocks. You can see the outline of the lamination sheets below. This allowed the girls to just slip the pixie into the jar, and the outline of the lamination sheet kept the pixie from flipping around or falling out. The laminating sheet is clear, so you can’t tell it is there at the end of the project.

Pixie Craft

  • Each student receives a pixie, jar and LED tea light.
  • Slip the pixie into the jar
  • Take a craft brush and lightly coat the outside of the jar in Mod Podge.
  • After the jar is coated in paste, lightly coat the outside of the jar in glitter.
  • We used an opalescent white/clear glitter, which gave the jar a more shimmery frosted look once the paste dried. For a cleaner work-surface, we had the students hold their jar over a bowl as they poured on the glitter. They could take the excess glitter in the bowl and ‘spot add’ glitter as needed. But keep in mind, that it *is* glitter, so it is going to get on everything.

Wizard School Party Game: The Hunt

The wizard school hunt was a game that I developed that is a cross between a scavenger hunt, ‘who-dunnit’ and escape-room-style puzzles.

The game starts with a diary page. The ‘students’ learn that their classmate has been taken into a secret chamber in the school. They must follow the clues to find out who has taken them, where the entrance to the secret chamber is hidden, and what dangerous beast dwells in the chamber. They must find the missing student before the time runs out!

As they solve clues, they are awarded the next clue- AND a suspect, beast, or location card. The suspect, beast, and location cards they find are ‘cleared of all suspicion,’ and are checked off of the checklist.

Once they solve each of the hidden clues and puzzles, there is only one suspect, beast, & location left on the checklist. This solves the mystery and unlocks the box!

I have made this game into a kit, which is now available on my Etsy shop, in both digital and printed options. The printed kit is professionally printed on heavy premium matte stock, and the digital copy is a ready-to-download PDF file: