For my son’s Harry Potter birthday party one of our main activities was a rousing game of Quidditch. I would say of all the activities, this was the crowd favorite. Being a huge Harry Potter fan and having read the books on multiple occasions I set out to adapt the game of Quidditch for a bunch of 10 year old muggles ;).
DIY Harry Potter Broomsticks
To start I made brooms for all the kiddos. It was a lot simpler than you might think. I got 4 foot wooden dowels from Home Depot and cut them in half to make 2 foot brooms. (5-6 foot probably would have been perfect to then have 2 1/2-3 foot brooms but I was trying to scrimp). I spray painted the dowels black and then gathered weed from around my property (no, I’m not kidding) to hot glue and tie onto the end of the dowel. For the finishing touch I used my cricut to add “firebolt” in gold vinyl onto the handle of the broom.
Make Your Own Quidditch Goals
The next thing we needed were some Quidditch goals. If you recall there are three hoops on either end of the field in Quidditch. Suspended very high in the air (because, you know, they’re flying). I had my husband help me with this. He assembled the goals out of PVC pipe and insulation. It was pretty simple!
The next thing we needed to do was to sort the kids into houses once they arrived at the party. Then we would have teams for our Quidditch game. To see how we did that check out this post.
Rules for Muggle Quidditch
Once we had our teams we were ready to play Quidditch! I spent a few minutes explaining to them how our version of Quidditch would work:
- Supplies needed: 1 snitch (golf ball spray painted gold), 1 quaffle (tennis ball), 2 bludgers (kickballs), Brooms & Quidditch goals.
- 1 seeker (looks for the snitch) and 1 keeper (goalie) is chosen for each team. All other players can be chasers and beaters
- Officiator has both teams line up opposite each other in the middle of the field and throws quaffle up for a “jump ball” (a la basketball).
- Seekers can now begin looking for the hidden snitch (identify the boundaries the snitch is hidden within) and all other players (except the keeper) can now begin trying to score by throwing the quaffle (tennis ball) through one of the three rings guarded by the opposing team. All players (except the keepers and seekers) can also use the bludgers (kickballs) to hit players on the opposing teams. Players hit by bludgers have to freeze for 10 seconds and drop the quaffle if they have it.
- All goals scored award the scoring team 10 points each. After every goal, teams line up facing each other in the middle of the field as they did at the beginning (much like after a goal in soccer) Game is over when snitch is found awarding the team that found it 50 points.
- Players must remain on brooms AT ALL TIMES! (this is the tricky part! They have to use one hand to hold onto the broom!!).
We used the house scarves the kids were given after they were sorted into their houses to help identify who was on what team. Most of them just tied them around their waist.
(we just had two houses: Ravenclaw and Gryffindor)
We ended up playing 2 rounds of Quidditch which took about 30 minutes. Many of the kids wanted to keep playing but we were running out of time to do all the other fun activities I had planned! You can read about those over here.
Here they are ready to face off, Ravenclaw Vs Gryffindor in their first round of Quidditch!
If you’re interested in learning more about all the details of our Harry Potter party you can check out the full party post here. And I also have a Harry Potter Digital Party Pack available that comes loaded with 20 pages of printables to help you throw your party! These resources will help you pull your party together last minute!
