Badge: Harry Potter — Games

The house who wins the most games wins the “Quidditch Cup.” While “Quidditch” is the most recognizable game, you may find other games are more to the liking of your group. You can do a variety of games or choose one for the houses to compete against each other.

Steps

1. Muggle Quidditch.
www.internationalquidditch.org/rules
Muggle Quidditch is a real sport. Learn about it. Review the IQA rulebook to get specifics on field size, play and more.

2. Home Quidditch.
Explore additional versions of Quidditch. If you’re playing at home or camp, you will need a simplified version to teach quickly. The kids will be more interested in playing than waiting. Some links are listed below. Explore the Web for even more.

NOTE: No matter which way you choose to play Quidditch, determine if you will play a single game or if you will have houses compete against each other over a longer time (such as day camp) and on the last day play for the Quidditch Cup. Make sure you take pictures of the winning Quidditch team with their prize.

3. Gobstones.
Gobstones is the equivalent of marbles. The difference is that the gobstones spit putrid liquid at players when they lose a point. Find rules for marble games to play.

4. Wizard’s chess.
Whether you choose to have your participants play chess or work as the pieces themselves, chess is a great rainy day activity. Teaching and playing chess is time consuming. You could do this as one-time activity or over a longer period, creating a competition to find the best player or even start a Wizard’s Chess Club.

5. Wizard duel.
summercampprogramdirector.com/harry-potter-camp-ideas-part-3-the-extras
Find out how this camp handles a wizard duel. Create your own list of spells to use or utilize the spell trading cards provided by the Enrichment Project. Remember, no unforgivable curses.

6. Broomstick races.
Create a play area. Provide broomsticks and adjust your favorite relay and / or race to include broomsticks.”Fly” on them or use them to sweep items.

7. Broom hockey.
Find out about broom hockey. Adjust the rules as necessary to fit your event.

8. Find the snitch.
Get a yellow ball (or balls). Hide them for participants to find. Award house points when found and relocate them.

9. Dementor tag.
One person wears a dark cloak as the dementor. The professor teaches the Patronus charm to the participants to protect themselves. After practicing the charm, the participants are ready to play. When they are not successful (didn’t get do it right) or if they ran away, the dementor tags them and they freeze. The professor is the only one who can unfreeze them with a mini chocolate bar. The professor cannot be frozen by the dementor.

10. Moaning Myrtle.
This is an adjustment on Marco Polo. Blindfold one of the participants and then the rest position themselves around the area and start moaning and crying. When the blindfolded child finds someone, they have to guess who it is. If they’re right, the two switch places and the game continues. If they do not guess correctly, they have to move on to the next person and guess again.

11. Immobulus.
Participants dance to music and when the “wizard” yells “immobulus”, the music stops and everyone stands perfectly still. If anyone moves, they are “out” and become the wizard. Then the music starts again.

12. Who am I?
As children arrive, pin a piece of paper on their back with the name of a character from the Harry Potter books (give easier characters to the younger children). Kids must then move around the room asking questions about their character, which can only be answered with “yes” or “no”. Example questions might be:

Am I a wizard?
Am I a Muggle?
Am I a child?
Am I good at magic?

13. Harry Potter BINGO.
Use your bingo set with special Harry Potter cards. You can find blank ones in the AEP supplements.

14. Mazes.
Whether it’s the maze of the Hogwarts building or the maze from the Triwizard Tournament, mazes can be small and on paper, in a cornfield or even a path of colored sand to follow. Create a maze for your participants. Include hidden items to add a scavenger hunt twist or time your participants to see who gets through your maze first.

15. Triwizard Tournament.
Create an obstacle course for your tournament. Base it on the Harry Potter version or create your own and try to incorporate items to help keep your course within the theme.

16. Printable games.
Create your own word searches, crosswords and more. Printable games can be created before your event. You can use minimal volunteers with printable games as the participants will help each other.

17. Runes.
Change your runes into a game by replacing each rune with a letter and create secret messages. You can make this a scavenger hunt by asking questions that lead them to different places around your area.

18. Guess how many.
From Bernie Bott’s Beans to chocolate frogs, give your participants a quick game to guess how many. You can award points to the house with the closest guess, give the container to the winner or award as you wish.

19. Horcrux scavenger hunt.
Create a scavenger hunt with items that might be used, or were used, as horcruxes. This could include rings, books and even people.

20. Trading cards.
Many card games involve trading cards. Find the trading cards in the supplements and print some out. Let your participants create their own rules.

21. Purchased games.
Harry Potter is extremely popular. You can purchase games for your participants to play. This includes games completely based on Harry Potter as well as popular games given a Harry Potter twist. Some include:

Clue Harry Potter
Harry Potter Wizard Chess
LEGO Harry Potter
Harry Potter Scene it?
Harry Potter Trivia (various)
Harry Potter UNO

21. Make your own.
Make your own original Harry Potter-based game. You can use the popular characters or explore areas in the series that give you the freedom to add your own imagination. For a start, Enrichment Project has provided a “Hogwarts Houses” sheet as a game board.