Summer Art: Parties

Monday, July 25, 2011

Pirate Party 2011

Derek found a map floating in a pirate bottle in the kiddie pool this morning!

It's a good thing there were some other pirates around!

Pirates ready for adventure!

The map got wet. But it wasn't really a map. It just had the first piece of a map with a letter telling us that the writer of a map was beginning to be turned into a zombie. He had the treasure, and would share, but needed to be saved first. We needed to not only find the place where the treasure was burried, but also find a cure for the zombie!

Pirates are ready!!!!

One by one they found the clues in the surrounding yards

Inside a swing set,

Under a Trampoline, In an apple tree, in a neighbors freezer...

And in a shed. Each piece of the map had a clue on the back that led to the next piece of map.

Finally all of the map pieces were put back together, and they could see where the treasure was. And the last clue said something about rootbeer being the cure for the zombies...we found a pack of rootbeer in the neighbors fridge!

Zombies were gaurding the treasure and had water guns! But the rootbeer worked!!!!

And then the zombies even helped us dig up the treasure!

There were gold coins, candy, rings, beads, and lots of other treasures that all the pirates shared.

But don't try to take anything away from THESE pirates!!!

**This activity was a great idea for my 13 yr. old and his friends who helped to bury the treasure, and then guard it for all the little kids in the neighborhood. They really liked participating and helping this way.

Saturday, July 16, 2011

Harry's Final Stand

We had the biggest Harry Potter Block Party ever! Since we have our own charter of Hogwarts in the neighborhood we decided to show our support and stand with Harry one last time!

Each wizard received a scroll written in invisible ink (white crayon) with a note attached that read: To reveal the secret message, you must paint the scroll with wizards blood, or a few drops of food coloring in some water works too.

The note just read: Calling all wizards, stand with us! Hogwarts (address) (time and date)

Since I was in charge of Slytherin, I didn't get all the photos I wanted so I will still try to recap as best I can.

We started at Diagon Alley and made wands with thin dowels and wooden beads glued on the handle part, with colored smaller beads in between

There was also Berti Botts candy Shop where wizards got every-flavored beans.

A few Death Eaters showed up, but they were reformed and ended up helping in potions class

There were quite a few celebrities who arrived...Luna Lovegood, and Professor Trelawney to name a few...

Wizards also made spell books, that were already bound together, they just needed to add a back and a front with card stock and decorate them. There was a page for autographs, and some pages for photos that parents could download from facebook later. There were also pages to glue directions for potions that they would get in potions class.

Then we moved on to Ravenclaw to be sorted.

The 4 houses were in the sorting hat on folded card stock and each student sat on the stool and I shook the hat over their heads until one of the slips of folded card stock came out with the house name on it.

The the wizards colored card stock ties with elastic around the neck the same colors as their house colors. Gryffindor: Red and Gold/ Ravenclaw: Blue and Bronze/ Slytherin: Silver and Green/ Hufflepuff: Yellow and Black

Then we moved to Slytherin. I made signs like this for all 4 of the Hogwarts Houses

Potions class consisted of making Oobleck: 2 parts cornstarch, 1 part water, with a little food coloring mixed in. And Soda Potions with mentos. Any kind of soda concoction you can think of, with a little mentos thrown in.