I decided to do a Harry Potter Birthday Party for my son's Sixth birthday. Since it was his first year of school (Kindergarten) and his birthday was in June, he had attended a fair amount of birthdays before his rolled around at the end of the school year. After listing the names of all the children who's birthdays he had attended and some friend's children, I had a guest list of 27 children. With a group this size and the age they were all at I knew I had to be extremely organized and keep the party structured or there would be pandemonium.  I surfed the Internet getting ideas for games, decorations and food and made myself up a binder to keep all the ideas together.  I then designed invitations using a clip art owl with a wizard's hat on I found on the internet inviting them to a Magical Hogwart's party. I then researched what games were going to be played and what food I was going to make. My plan was to have this at our local park but I had a contingency plan in place in case of rain, to hold it in our clubhouse in our complex (I prayed for sun).  Once I had firm numbers on children attending, I sat down and divided the group of children into the different houses, so there were almost equal numbers of people in each of the four groups. I went to a fabric store and bought felt, cheap black fabric, black ribbon and red velvet. I took apart a paper party hat my son had from a previous birthday party and used this to make up my template for making black felt wizard hats. If you do this, use a glue gun to put the hats together, it works really fast, only use craft glue if you have lots of time and patience.  I was able to also find the black elastic string at my local craft store for the chinstraps. I then used one of my son's old Halloween costume capes as a template and sewed capes for all the children.  They weren't fancy but worked well. I then sewed the red velvet into loot bags for all the attendees.  I bought the tulle circles you get for wedding party favours in two different colours and filled one with gold chocolate coins and the other with Jelly Belly jellybeans.  I bought a big collection of gel pens (35 different colours) and from the dollar store little address books.  I really lucked out here, the previous year they were clearing out Harry Potter costumes after Halloween, which consisted of a robe, wand, glasses and tattoos with the 4 different houses and the Hogwarts crest. I had a friend scan the tattoos into bitmaps for me and then used them where I needed them.  On the bags of chocolate money coins I had the Hogwarts crest and From the Bank of Gringotts; jellybeans; crest plus Bertie Botts Every Flavoured Bean, a gel pen and a small address book with a sticker on the front with the Hogwart's crest saying School Directory. I filled the loot bags with the money, beans, pens and address books then tied them closed with gold cording and labeled each bag with the child's name and house crest on the label.  I also printed a Hogwarts crest for each cape on a sticker (this would have worked better if I had used iron-ons) and printed each of the four house crests on stickers to be applied later. I also made a sorting hat, a big witches hat for myself, borrowed a witches costume to wear and bought some wood doweling cut it to wand length and painted it black.  I went to the park a week before the party and looked around deciding which areas we would take over. I had also decided on one of the activities being a treasure hunt for dragon eggs, so I quickly sketched out how I would set up the maps (since there were 4 groups, I made 4 different maps), keeping the route to 3 stops because of their ages. I made up the maps using clip art from the Internet and Harry Potter lingo (go to the Dementor Tree, Hagrid's Hut, Troll bridge, etc.). I also make myself a golden snitch piñata using a balloon, flour, water and gold tissue paper.  This I filled with candy and beads from the dollar store. The day of the party we had sunshine, so we set off to the park. I grabbed two picnic tables and set one for food and the other for crafts. I had a stool set for the children to sit on with the sorting hat and a baby monitor under the stool for my husband to announce which house the children would go into.  As the children arrived I greeted them dressed as Professor McGonnegall and sat the one's on the stool that were willing (not all would sit on the stool) and placed the sorting hat on their heads, my husband announce which house they were accepted to with the list I gave to him for reference using the other end of the baby monitor. I then placed a cape around their shoulders, stuck on their house crest and gave them their wands and hats to decorate at the craft table, which I had supplied with paint pens, feathers, pipe cleaners, glitter, etc. The children who wouldn't sit on the stools, I put their capes on, stuck on their house crests, gave them their hats and wands to decorate.  This worked well because we did not have all the children arriving at the same time and some took their time decorating their wands and hats, so I was able to move them onto the next activity with minimal problems.  Because we were in a public park, I utilized the parents who had remained for the party and had them stand near the spots where I had placed the dragon eggs so they did not go missing. I had made these using the plastic eggs you can get at Easter for filling with candy and spray painted them gold, made some green sludge using green food colouring, borax and unflavoured gelatin and put this in the eggs with cheap plastic lizards. I had one egg per child and had an adult walk with each group of children following the map I gave to each group to follow. I then instructed each group to come back to the Golden Snitch tree, where the hunt started, and we would hatch the eggs. I had a bucket of water waiting and took the egg from each child and hatched it, giving the baby dragon to each child. While we hatched the eggs, my husband hung the Golden Snitch piñata in the tree and we had the group line up to take their turn beating the snitch. After this we retired to the food. We had Bat legs (chicken drumettes), unicorn horns (bugles) vicious veggies (veggie platter) festering fruit (fruit platter) caterpillar cocoons (pigs in blankets), wizard wands (pretzels), dragon scales (chips) and Fire Whisky (fruit punch). The cake was decorated with a plastic Harry Potter catching the snitch on top. I used gold and silver paper plates and napkins from a dollar store (much cheaper than themed plates and cups). After food we did present opening and then I handed out the loot bags. This all took 2 hours (what I had scheduled) and I had held one game in reserve if we needed if for timing called Wizard stomp, which consisted of balloons with gold coins in them blown up and tied to ankles. Everyone had a good time, with having the structure and keeping the children moving from one activity to another, I avoided the problem you get when 5 to 6 year old boys get into if they don't have something to focus their attention on.