On Thursday 12th December, Chestnut Class were rewarded for their team effort in reading with a Harry Potter Day.
When the children got home the previous Friday, the 5th of December, they had received a very special letter informing them of their acceptance to Hogwarts - much to the confusion of the muggle Postman who had to deliver numerous letters to children living in 'the cupboard under the stairs'.
On arriving at school on Thursday, Chestnut couldn't enter via the traditional method of a common door and so they had to go through platform 9 and 3/4s.
Panic and excitement set in, nobody was quite sure whether to enter or not. When they did they were greeted by Dumbledore himself. Everyone made a dash to the Honeydukes sweets on show but unfortunately, entry to Honedukes sweet shop was only granted with good choices throughout the day and of course, one will need a Marauder's map to find the right entrance. With long rows of tables and the flickering candles around the board, early learning began with a look at the house crest and the children were sorted into houses (and yes, the sorting hat talked). After that we stained our Marauder's maps with teabags to make them look like parchment
At break time because the new netball court was being painted (a muggle sport similar to Quidditch but no flying!) Chestnut got some fresh air with Willow class. Surprisingly, the tiny muggles weren't phased by meeting arguably the greatest wizard in history! After break Dumbledore was joined by Professor Trelawney to help with potions lesson. There are some great stills taken from a video at the exact point when everyone's caldrons overflowed - if you want to know what pure joy looks like then I'm sure this isn't far off! Then Chestnut learned about spells and matched up the name of the spell with a muggle origin word to link up the effect of the spell and the definition of the real word. They then made little spell books.
