Harry Potter Party: Quidditch Game

It is fall and everyone is back to school! How about a game of Quidditch? 

This is the 9th in a series of 10 posts about our Harry Potter Birthday Party. You can read our other posts at the links below:
The Hogwarts Acceptance Letter
Invitation and Costumes
The Guests Arrive
Diagon Alley

The Sorting Hat Ceremony

Potions Class

Divination
The Quest for the Missing Snitch

After the party guests had found the golden snitch, we headed out to the back yard to play a rousing game of Quidditch. We had hung three hoops and house banners on each side of the backyard. I found a huge role of tubing at a thrift store for $2. Score! My husband was able to cut the tubing into pieces and duct tape each piece into a hoop to make all 6 of my rings.

The banners were simple triangular pennants that I purchased at Hobby Lobby. Then I glued on the coordinating color stripes.

Here is Madame Hooch explaining the rules of the game. Here is how we played: 

Two seekers from each team had to ride broomsticks as they tried to score by throwing the quaffle through the hoops. When a seeker had the quaffle they could take three large steps and then they had to pass it off to another seeker from their team. 

Meanwhile, three bludgers from each team used a large soft plastic ball to try to hit the seekers and stop them when they had the ball. As soon as a seeker was hit with the ball, he or she had to drop the quaffle and it was up for grabs! We didn't really have any keepers to guard the goals since our field was pretty short.

Here everyone has stopped play because my son had the golden snitch attached to a fishing pole and he was swinging it off the deck every so often. If you caught the golden snitch, the game ended and your team won. He would swing it around over the field for a few seconds while the kids jumped for it and then he would reel it back in. Play would resume until the snitch appeared again.

The kids had so much fun with this game that we ended up playing three rounds. It was a great way to burn off all that party energy and get ready for some ice cream and cake!  

Even Dumbledore enjoyed watching the match!

The last activity at our party involved cauldron cakes, butter beer and Honeydukes Sweet Shop! Stay tuned for our final post in our Harry Potter series.