A6 became A7 last week and to celebrate her birthday we had a potions party at her request. We have been reading The Land of Stories and this was her inspiration. I decided to make it a tiny bit more flowery and girly by theming it around the Flower Fairies.
I didn’t want to focus too much on the magic part so went with a star motif. We asked Leah to have her girls come as fairies and on arrival each fairy received a tiara and a star shaped wand:
I decorated the room with a potion party banner and red table cloth with lots of cut out foam stars stuck on. I threw on some star shaped confetti for good measure and added my son’s star curtains as a back drop:
I set the whole table up like I would a chemistry lesson, with lab coats and safety goggles. I had three ‘recipe’ cards and I had set out trays with everything the fairies would need to make the potion recipes:
The rest of the table was filled with every. single. piece of science equipment we owned bar the microscope:
I filled our numerous test tubes with liquids such as conditioner, oil, vinegar, soy sauce, treacle, golden syrrup….basically any liquid we had in our kitchen/bathroom. Other test tubes and containers were filled with bicarb, corn flour, soup nuts, herbs and spices, lentils, nuts, washing up liquid….again anything I thought might make a large mess! I had coloured dyes available, lots of different scents, spray bottles with vinegar, petals, ‘fairy wishes (old dandilions that you blow and make a wish).
I put out spoons, measuring cups, funnels, turkey basters, pippettes, stirrers, and a myriad of containers, bowls and cups for mixing. We then collected our little fairies and put them to work with their helpers (Gary and Leah).
The first recipe was wild thyme foam (basically elephant toothpaste, mixing yeast and hydrogen peroxide). I had aged some card with tea and scrumpled it up whilst wet, and straightening it out to dry. I photocopied pictures of the flower fairies and stuck them on each of the three cards and made up a potion name according to the flower fairy on the card. I wrote the potion recipe by hand and was really pleased by how they turned out. The girls were mesmerised and giggled throughout…
The next potion was a fiizy recipe using lemon juice and bicarb called buttercup nectar. For this we used plastic champagne glasses:
And the final recipe was just good old bicarb and vinegar recipe which I named Wild Rose Bubbly:
The purpose of these recipes was to show the girls what affects could be achieved by mixing certain ingredients. After they had successfully made each of the recipes they were allowed to just play with everything on offer, and design their own potions:
And play they did. Never have I seen four little ones so absorbed in their activity. They squirted, spooned and mixed:
Again, and again…
….and again:
Minutes, then hours went by very quickly and soon it was time for a quick tea whilst watching the ultimate fairy film, Tinkerbell. For tea I made heart shaped sandwiches with star shaped crisps and a pick and mix icecream pudding. They ate off our Valentine heart shaped plates and drank from our heart shaped goblets:
It was a lovely relaxing end to a very productive afternoon. We sent our fairy guests home with a brown paper bag decorated with a flower fairy and containing a bubble lab and some sleepy potion (Ovaltine mix and marshmallows):
What a lovely time everyone had. Afterwards B4 asked for a flower fairies potion party for her fifth birthday. And really, there’s no greater acolade than that, is there?
