First Friday is Mother's Day at Hogwarts - this week!

Hey Hippogriffs!

This Friday is our Harry Potter First Friday event, and here's what we have planned:

• Tour of Hogwarts (see below)
• Sorting Hat
• Wand making
• Potion making - ice cream bar
• HERBO-BINGO and/or play-dough mandrake making
• Toddler room mask making or stuffed animal Care of Magical Creatures
• Quidditch and/or crystal ball dodge ball - hopefully outside

I think in the interest of time, I can take care of most of the supplies either from our own craft stash and backyard or from Hippogriff funds. But if anyone wants to bring wand supplies, ice cream toppings, small plants or play-dough, feel free to do so- the more the merrier! Also if you can think of balls, prizes, or brooms needed for the Quidditch/dodge ball game, bring those too.

But you do have one assignment: help us create the tour! We talked about making it Mother's Day-inspired and planting various tributes to magical mamas and other important ladies from the Harry Potter series around the church as part of our tour. You could draw portraits, dress up like these ladies, or whatever you want to do. If you can think of a fun activity to do or spell to learn related to your magical mom when the group comes to her stop on the tour, that would make it fabulous. Some ideas:

• Harry's mom in the Mirror of Erised
• Mrs. Weasley - knitting, or trying to Ridikulous her fears away
• Professor McGonnagal - teaching spells
• Tonks - fighting Dementors
• Sirius's mom in the screaming portrait
• Aunt Petunia - yelling at Harry!
• Gryffindor's Fat Lady portrait - guess the password?
• Moaning Myrtle - hiding in the bathroom
• Narcissa Malfoy - being snobbish?
• Professor Trelawney - throwing "crystal" balls? or telling fortunes!
• Others?

Please pick one or more of these ladies that you want to be in charge of, and come on Friday ready to make her part of the tour! And let us know who you're doing so we can make sure we have enough moms represented to make it a good tour. If we have enough kids, we'll give four rounds of  tours (one for each house) while the other activities are going on. Or if we have a small group maybe we can take our own moms on one big tour.

See you on Friday!

~Lynne

First Friday update!

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Meeting this Sunday!

Hey Hippogriffs,

It's meeting time again! We have a lot to discuss:

Hogwarts Express! 

If any of you joined us for the March Justice Sunday, you got to hop aboard our people-powered Hogwarts Express: a train of kids walking from church to Panera and back. Why did we do this? Because we're in Ravenclaw now and that means AIR. In previous meetings, you guys decided that one of the best ways we could address air pollution was to promote alternative forms of transportation, such as biking and walking. How about biking and walking to Hogwarts??? Ok, not literally. But we're going to collectively add up our miles between now and September 1st and see if we can walk or ride the distance between Columbus and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, Florida - by foot, wheel, or broom.... anything but gas-powered engines! It's roughly 960 miles according to Google maps. How many pounds of pollutants do you think that would save, if you walked or biked that distance instead of drove? We're going to find out!

AND we're going to track our steps in a House Cup Competition, already underway thanks to our Justice Sunday friends. Check out the hourglasses in the hall at First UU and feel free to start tracking your steps and miles and adding them to the House of your choice!  You can wear a pedometer or maybe set up a step-tracking app on your mobile device, or just count your steps next time you go for a walk and see how much it adds up! And let's talk at our meeting about ways we can get more friends and family to join us. Everyone's welcome to Hogwarts this year - muggle or magic!

Earth Day

The city has a lot of events set up to celebrate Earth Day - check them out: http://earthdaycolumbus.org. I notice Cycling for All and the Sierra Club are having a cycling event at the Audubon Center on Saturday, April 20. Sounds like a perfect Ravenclaw activity to me! Anyone interested? Or in participating as a group in any other Earth Day activities? 

Accio Books! 

The Harry Potter Alliance is once again doing their annual book drive: http://thehpalliance.org/accio-books. This time they are partnering with the International Quidditch Association and NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month) to help raise books in support of Read Indeed, a non-profit literacy organization and the vision of Maria Keller, a book-loving 7th grader who wants to collect and distribute 1 million books to needy kids by the time she’s 18. Maria is a huge Harry Potter fan and she has already donated over 800,000 books! The HPA is also doing an virtual House Cup Competition of their own right here: http://thehpalliance.org/accio-books/accio-house-cup. How many more books can we add, do you think? How can we combine this project with our other work? Anyone want a book bike like this as much as I do??? http://tucsonvelo.com/news/book-bike-will-take-library-for-a-ride/9635

First Friday: in case you missed previous emails, we have postponed the First Friday event to May since a lot of folks have been out of town for Spring Break. However, there are already plans underway for the May First Friday to create Mother's Day cards that evening instead, so I'm hoping we can combine our activities somehow. Ideas for making Harry Potter Night more of a Mother's Day/Mother Nature theme? Maybe we can make our own ink in Potions class? Recycle items for paper for the cards? Celebrate our favorite fictional mothers like Mrs. Weasley? Have a nighttime bike rodeo out in the parking lot??? What else? Let's do some more brainstorming and planning now that we have more time.

And speaking of Mother's Day... our May meeting falls on the big day itself, so I say no May meeting. Speaking as a mama, I for one would like to stay home and relax that day... besides we'll have already had our fun at First Friday. So the next meeting after this will be June 9, and we'll be getting ready for PRIDE! 

See you this Sunday, 12:30-2!

~Lynne

OH MY GOD, A THREE-HEADED DOG! and other notes from today!

Hey Hippogriffs!

Awesome meeting today everyone! Here's a summary of what we did and talked about:

• We made some nice flyers for the Harry and the Potters show tomorrow night! You guys are so creative! Some were about the show and some were about Pets without Parents. The shelter will have a representative at the show and bring materials as well, and I'll bring what we made today and some Enlightened Hippogriffs brochures too. We also listened to some Harry and the Potters music while we worked (OMG a three-headed dog!) Those of you who were digging it might want to bring some cash to the show tomorrow night - I bet they'll be selling CDs. Or check out their website here..
• We also began our Monster Book of Monsters project for the Capital Area Humane Society. We talked about some animal books we've read - Because of Winn-Dixie, Warriors, Seekers, and Hoot - and began creating a virtual book report of sorts made up of a PowerPoint presentation about them and scans of drawings we made today. We had a LOT to say about the Warriors series - I think it may almost rival our love of Harry Potter! Please continue to read animal books, draw pictures about them, and tell us about them for the PowerPoint! You can email us about books too! When we're all done, we'll get to take a tour of the Humane Society and see all the real-life lovable "monsters" (cats and dogs)!
• We started brainstorming about our next projects and came up with some fantastic ideas:
• In March, we're going to once again help put on the annual Harry Potter First Friday potluck at First UU. We talked about what activities have been our favorites in the past - Potions, Quidditch races, the sorting hat, wand-making - and how we can maybe do some other activities differently. We thought Transfiguration could include face-painting and/or mask making, and Care of Magical Creatures could be a childcare for younger kids, with animal dress-up! Stay tuned for more about First Friday in the coming weeks... it's right around the corner!
• In April, May, and June, we'll be in Ravenclaw and that means Air: flying creatures, global warming, air pollution. We talked about how bees are endangered and what that means for pollination and honey, as well as cockfighting and factory farming of chickens (ok they may not fly, but they're still birds!) We came up with an awesome idea to help raise awareness about air pollution - a Quidditch event on bikes! Or scooters, skateboards, any kind of wheels except cars! Or just feet! We're thinking of having it in the parking lot behind church sometime when the weather is warm enough to have water balloons and squirt guns as dementor attacks, maybe an obstacle course or maze that includes pollution-related true/false questions to get through it. Plans are still brewing.. let's keep thinking about this!
• We're also starting to think about Pride in June, because we had a blast doing the parade last year! But how can we relate it this time to Ravenclaw and air? Something to do with rainbows?? One idea is a people-powered float instead of using a car!
• Finally, we put together a basket of pet goodies for the First UU auction. I'll be bringing it to church this week - if anyone has anything else they'd like to contribute, please let me know!

See you tomorrow night at the show! Yay!

~Lynne

Who's ready to get magical????

Who's ready to get magcial with Harry and the Potters on Monday!???!

But first we have a meeting on Sunday!  We have three jobs to do:

• We'll be getting ready for the show the next day! Get ready to make some cool flyers about Pets without Parents that we can pass out at the show!
• We'll talk about the animal books we've been reading for the Humane Society. If you need the list again, it's right here: http://cahs-pets.org/programs/book_list.htm. I'm guessing many of you have already read some of the books on the list, or maybe you have other pet-related books you've read. It's all good - just bring them in and tell us about them! We're going to start creating our own Monster Book of Monsters, a magically awesome book report to make Hagrid proud!
• We'll put together our donation to the First UU auction. Last time we talked about donating some of the pet toys we made. How about adding some animal/pet books as well? Or maybe some treats? Other ideas? If you'd like to donate any of these things, please bring them to our meeting and we'll put together a Care of Magical Creatures basket! Thanks!

See you soon, Gryffindors!

~Lynne

Harry and the Potters!

Here's an event page for the Harry and the Potters show - please RSVP and share!

https://www.facebook.com/events/528853947149452

Meeting notes and BIG NEWS!!

Hey guys,

Thanks for an awesome meeting on Sunday! For those who weren't there, we:

• Had some delicious cupcakes to celebrate my 20-year anniversary of quitting smoking! I calculated how much money I've saved by not buying cigarettes for 20 years - including the rate of inflation, it's about $28,000! Not to mention the cost on my health! Thanks for helping me celebrate this and blowing out the candles with our healthy, smoke-free lungs!
• Began our Care of Magical Creatures class in honor of Gryffindor! From now through March, we'll be focused on animals and especially pets! We talked about several animal shelters around town and how we can help them:
• Capital Area Humane Society would like to host us for a tour of their facility. However first they want us to do a book project: please read a book on their list, or come up with your own favorite animal book, and tell us about it at our next meeting. The book list is here:http://cahs-pets.org/programs/book_list.htm. We'll also be doing this with the Sunday school kids at this weekend's Justice Sunday. I was thinking we could come up with our own Monster Book of Monsters, all about these books!
• We made lots of awesome pet toys! We made fabric chew toys for dogs and yarn mice and a cool cardboard mouse for cats, and a paper towel roll toy for birds! Great creativity everybody! We'll donate these to Pets without Parents and Colony Cats. We'll make more of these at Justice Sunday as well - and please feel free to keep making them! They can also use fleece blankets and lots of other items - I'll put their wishlists on our website.
• And finally we announced some BIG NEWS! It's now confirmed, so I can share all the details......

HARRY AND THE POTTERS ARE GOING TO DO A SHOW TO BENEFIT PETS WITHOUT PARENTS!!!

• It will be Monday, February 11, beginning at 7 pm at Ace of Cups in Clintonville
• ALL AGES are welcome!
• Opening act is local, kid-friendly band Delay
• Cost is $8/person, and the Harrys have agreed to donate a percentage of the ticket price to the shelter, through us! I told them about our Care of Magical Creatures campaign, and they are happy to help!

For those of you not familiar with Harry and the Potters, they are an awesome rock band that has become famous for singing songs all about our favorite boy wizard and his friends, launching the Wizard Rock - or "Wrock" - movement and hundreds of other Potter-inspired bands. They are undoubtedly the biggest among wrock bands though, and attract quite the following, and put on a very entertaining show! So this will be great news for Pets without Parents, who among other things can really use a donation to help them fund a new and larger facility to help more animals! We're going to help make that happen, with the help of the Harrys! Yay!

More about the band here: http://harryandthepotters.tumblr.com, and the shelter here: http://www.petswithoutparents.net.

So please spread the news about the show - feel free to make flyers, share on Facebook and other social media, and among your friends and families! Come one, come all! I know it's a school night, but it's for a good cause!

Our next meeting is Feb 10, which is the day before the show so I think in addition to talking about the animal books we read, we'll make flyers about animals that we can pass out during the show to help raise awareness. So keep those creative thinking caps (wizard hats?) on!

Hooray hooray!

~Lynne