Camp Hogwarts- The Chamber of Secrets

 Day Two

Welcome to day two of Camp Hogwarts-The Chamber of Secrets! We have a lot fun to discover, so let's get started. 

Schedule:

Breakfast Menu- Pumpkin pasties and pumpkin juice

Activities- Spell charm matching, Potions Experiment, Making Polyjuice Potion, Magical Creature Cauldrons, Flying Car

Lunch- Leftover Beef Stew

Movie-Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Dinner- Roasted Herb Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, & Asparagus

The morning began with another yummy theme breakfast of pumpkin pasties and pumpkin juice.  We also added sides of yogurt and fruit.  I found the pumpkin pasty recipe in my Unofficial Harry Potter Recipe book.  They are basically little pumpkin hand pies that the kids described as pumpkin pop tarts.  A bit of work and time to make, but worth it. 

         

The main event, and probably Tucker's favorite thing of the entire week, was our Quiddich match.  This magical, soccer-like game is played on "brooms" while players try to shoot balls through rings on posts.  I bought a few hula-hoops from the dollar store and had Tony help me attach them to some PVC pipes we had in the garage, then pounded them into the grown.  Each hoop is worth a different amount of points.  Traditionally, Quiddich requires at least seven players and two teams.  Since it was only the three of us, we had to make up our own rules.  I bought two small bouncy balls for the quaffle, two large play balls for the bludgers, and used a small squishy pool skipping ball for the snitch.  We rotated positions, each being the goalie, the chaser, and the beater.  The day we decided to play happened to be one of the hottest days of the year with a severe heat advisory, so we never got around to trying to catch the snitch.  However, that didn't stop our game.  We decided to move the play to the pool and played a very similar, if not better, version.  We used pool noodles as our brooms and swam around trying to toss the balls through the hoop without getting hit by the bludgers.  Tuck was finally able to dive for the golden snitch this way too.  Honestly--it was a pretty fun game.  We will definitely be playing throughout the summer. 

Yard Quiddich vs Pool Quiddich

Once we had cooled off and dried off, we had some leftover beef stew from the night before, because--I honestly didn't feel like making anything. ;)

Quiet time was a sweet relief before the little witch and wizard demanded more entertainment.  (Why did I decide to do this again?) 

It was time for our Potions lesson!  While they were in quiet time, I gathered the supplies we'd need for our experiments.  I found a resource on Pinterest for one that didn't require me to go out and buy anything new.  This one was called "Elephant Toothpaste".  It only needed hydrogen peroxide, yeast, water, dish soap and food coloring.  You can find the instructions here. 

It was a slow-moving reaction so the kids were a tad underwhelmed.  We quickly pivoted and used some random juices from the fridge to create our Polyjuice potion.  I had some leftover blue tropical punch from a birthday party, lime sherbert, and a can of flavored sparkling water that I let them mix and pour into a couple of fun glass potion bottles from the dollar store.  One thing I've learned throughout this whole project is: kids are pretty simple. They just want to be involved and have your attention. You really don't need to spend gobs of money on specific supplies to make them happy.  They love that I just freestyled and grabbed what I had on hand.  It was pretty disgusting to drink, but thankfully I wasn't the one trying to transform into anyone else that day.  

When I was shopping last week with Liv, she pointed out a toy that I had never seen before.  It was a cauldron that claimed to let you make a potion to create a magical creature.  It was only $10 and I figured it could satisfy my potions/care of magical creatures class for the week so I picked up a couple.  These Magical Mixies turned out to be one of their favorite things from the week.  The toys were very cute and both kids really enjoyed the surprise creatures they each got and Tuck even went back to the store to get himself another with his own money.  If you have kids who love little trinkets and fidgets, these toys are great. 

One of my favorite parts of the Chamber of Secrets is the flying car.  I always thought it would be so fun to have in real life.  I stumbled across this flying car simulation on YouTube and decided to throw it in to our day.  The video itself is an hour long, but we only "flew" for a few minutes.  I put the kids in a laundry basket and tried to lift and turn it according to the video. Now that they're older and have ridden on real roller coasters, it's not nearly as wonderous as it was when I did DisneyHome. But they still enjoyed it. 

                

We rounded out the day with by watching the second movie and attempting to make butterbeer popcorn--which was a fail. haha!  But the kids didn't seem to mind. I'd say that's a success.

                  

The hanging lights really create the perfect ambiance for movie-watching!