Harry Potter Reading Challenge

I’m so excited to share a Harry Potter Summer Reading Challenge that my friend Nicole at Book Led Learning put together. If you or your kids are into Harry Potter, you’ll want to head over to visit her on Instagram and snag her printable for the reading challenge (in her Linktree). My kids are super excited about this, so I decided to put together a few book ideas that we can read for this challenge.

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Nicole matched first year Hogwarts classes to real life book genres so kids can read their way through a year at Hogwarts this summer or anytime of the year. Here are some of my ideas for each class, but as my kids do this Harry Potter reading challenge, I’ll update this post with other selections we find.

Transfiguration – a transformation

Many wonderful children’s books have a transformation as the focal point of the story, so this is a super easy category. We just finished The Horse and His Boy, which is part of the Chronicles of Naria series, and my kids definitely want to move onto the next book, so Prince Caspian will be one of our summer family read aloud books. What are your favorite books that feature a character transformation? Share your recommendations in the comments below!

History of Magic – History, Historical Fiction, or Biography

We put a strong emphasis on history in our structured school work using historical fiction and biography books. My kids also use the books to branch out to related time periods and places to learn more about something that has really sparked their interest.

For this Hogwarts class, I simply asked them to pick a historical time, place, or person that they’d like to learn more about this summer. My oldest (now 12 yrs old) picked medieval castles since Hogwarts is in a castle. My youngest (now 9 yrs old) wants to learn more about Japanese history followed by sushi. So, we’ll browse through our books and take a trip to the library to see what they can find.

Herbology – Plants or Nature

This is an easy Hogwarts class because we already read a lot of books about plants and nature! Check out our favorite gardening books for kids and nature books for kids in these posts.

Aside from those books, my girls decided to stick with the topic of herbology. Using herbs for health and nutrition is actually just a normal part of our lifestyle so that’s nothing new for the kids. Instead, I offered to change things up a bit and focus on foraging. I already have a few items from Linda Runyon’s Wild Food Homeschool Package, so we’ll be using those to see what wild foods are found around the desert SW and prepare a new dish.

Charms – Magic

For this Hogwarts class, I wanted to offer my kids a selection of different magic books. I choose…

The Greatest Magician in the World is a story picture book that comes with everything you need for learn and perform 7 magic tricks!

Harry Potter: A History of Magic is the companion to the exhibition Harry Potter: A History of Magic at the British Museum. You can explore the exhibit online at here.

We’ll also be reading about Harry Houdini in Who Was Harry Houdini?, Harry Houdini for Kids, and the DK Biography Harry Houdini which is awesome for older kids.

Potions – Cooking

This Hogwarts class fits in perfectly with our summer learning plans already, but I still asked my kids what they want to read (or do) for this Harry Potter Reading Challenge. I just bought this Discover and Learn kitchen science book set for us to play with this summer.

They asked for more baking time. They picked out the American Girl Baking book from our library. We’ve tried a lot of kid’s cookbooks and sometimes it’s hit or miss. This one is put together by Williams-Sonoma so I’m looking forward to some awesome recipes!

Astronomy – Space

One of my kids is a HUGE science kid! She loves anything science related so we’ve spent quite a bit of time on space already. She actually enjoys looking around NASA’s website just for fun (not their kids’ website, although that’s pretty awesome too). I’m not sure how much of it she understands but she loves it.

Her favorite space books are 100 Things to Know About Space, Little Kids First Big Book of Space, Big Book of Stars and Planets, and Astronaut Academy. We’ll revisit those favorites and also add Gutsy Girls Go for Science: Astronauts.

Defense Against the Dark Arts – spooky

It turns out that our girls and their neighborhood friends have been planning to start their own ghost hunting business. They’ve been researching and reading about ghosts with a pile of kid-friendly books we got from the library. Even though it’s summer time, you might want to check out a few of our favorite Halloween Books for kids in this post about our October Morning Basket.

Flying Lessons – teaches you something new

This Hogwarts class is wide open! I love asking my kids, “What do you want to learn?” Their answers sometimes surprise me! We always make a list at the beginning of the school year of possible things they want to learn about just for fun. For the Harry Potter Reading Challenge, my youngest is continuing the Japanese theme from History of Magic class by learning words and phrases in Japanese.

Even though this is a summer reading challenge, you customize this to fit your kids’ ages and abilities. If you have older kids, you can even have it last all year by using chapter books. Be sure to grab the free printable that Nicole put together at Book Led Learning (in her Linktree) and check out her posts where she is crowd sourcing more book recommendations for each Hogwarts class!