Monday…..

Today was the first week of my so-called Harry Potter Extravaganza. The new (and last – *sniff*) movie comes out this Friday so I am having a whole week of Harry related programs. This morning I showed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone upstairs in Dexter Hall (a big room with a large movie screen & projector.) This was in combination with my other new summer program idea – Monday Movie Madness. See what I did there?

At any rate, no one came. Then I showed Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince this afternoon and two moms with two (young) kids came. They didn’t stay long. I am chalking this up to people on vacation & my kind of last-minute advertising.

The last program on the agenda was the Harry Potter Club, which meets monthly every 1st Monday of the month. Since last Monday was a holiday, we met today….in case you were wondering. This club was started by two high school girls (who also run the anime club) and they were a bit disappointed that it ended up with mostly elementary school kids so they began “forgetting” to come. At that point, it was EVERY Monday, which I quickly changed to once a month.

So, today we made wands. And I have to tell you that I am so totally excited about these! I got the idea from the very cool Harry Potter fan site, The Leaky Cauldron. This is a GREAT site for HP crafts. Though they are usually more on the grown-up side. The idea for the wands is credited to Chris Barnardo.

They are made from paper, glue, tape & paint – and they look like real wooden wands! No whittling necessary. I spent this past weekend making unfinished wands. I did most of the work and left the painting to the kids. These kids are mostly younger, so I didn’t want it to be frustrating, but I wanted them to have a cool finished product. I also made some wands at other less-finished stages, which some chose. A few did choose to make them entirely themselves. This took them about an hour and a half, though it would probably have been shorter if they didn’t have to wait to use the glue guns & hair dryers (2 extremely important crafting tools no Story Time Room should be without!) I had a few adult helpers, which was a lifesaver, since there were about 14 kids there between the ages of 7-13. Despite the waiting intervals, such as drying time or waiting to use the glue gun, they were really great. I had Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets playing on the “reading” side of the room so there was something to do while they were waiting. All of the wands turned out great and they were all very different. It actually went well! And it was a good way to end a long, hectic day.