Simple magic tricks to amuse kids

Cafe Society
21

Here’s one that my uncle used to pull on us. It does require a confederate with access to a phone.

You get the child to select a card at random and show it to everyone. Then tell him that you know a wizard that can name the card. The child picks a card, six of clubs. You then call the wizard. He answers “Hello” You reply, “Is the wizard in please?” That is his cue to begin naming the suits with a slight pause between each. When he says “Clubs” you say “Sure, I’ll hang on” or " This is Jeff" or whatever. He then begins going through the cards “2,3,4.etc.” Upon reaching 6 you interrupt and say “Here he is” and start to hand the phone to the kid. The wiz may confirm by saying “six of clubs” to which you may reply “Oh, his name is Billy”. The wiz can then play it up any way he wants but in the end he names the card. Once you have it down you can call you partner anytime (although he may not appreciate it). We could never figure it out. It never occurred to us that the wiz never answered his own phone. Even that can be gotten around with just a little planning. I never tried it on an adult but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

22

A classic that requires no prep:

Shuffle up a deck, fan it out, let them pick one at random. Tell them to look at it and show it around, but not show you.

While they are doing that, unfan them back into a deck. Surreptiously slip the top card onto the bottom face down and turn the deck over. You now have a deck of all face up cards, with a single card on top that is face down, but it looks ordinary. Have them slide thir card back into the deck whereever they like. Hide the deck in your hands and shake it, turning over your hands so the deck is now right side up, aside from the now=bottom card and their own card.

Now the reveal, tell them you found their card and marked it so they know it’s theirs. Fan the deck out (making sure to hide the face-up bottom card) and what they see is their card is the only one face up!

23

Here’s a super simple one that requires no dexterity and gets a good reaction:
Use a ring that just fits over the top of your thumb- a wedding ring works well if you have one. With your hand in a fist, thumb sticking up- the “thumbs up” position- put the ring on the top of your thumb and show it to the audience. Cover your hand with a book or put it behind your back or something, stick the ring in the fist part of your hand with your thumb quickly and voila, no ring! Cover the hand again, stick thumb in to retrieve ring on thumb, and it’s back! Seems obvious, but you can hide and retrieve the ring over and over so quickly that it appears pretty magical. It’s critical that the thumb or any part of the hand is never seen to move at all, so using your other hand to cover probably won’t work, as it’s not large enough.

Another simple but effective one that requires an easy to find prop- a bic pen of the style that has a cap that tapers to a point. Say to your audience that you can magnetize the cap of the pen. Make a show of rubbing the pen against your shrt or something to make it appear you’re charging it with static electricity, if you want. Then hold the end of the cap with one hand between your thumb and forefinger (it helps if you can surreptitiously moisten them just a little with the condensation of a glass or something). Hold the cap about a 1/2 inch or a bit more away from the pen and squeeze the cap. It will appear to jump onto the pen of its own accord. Let the audience try though, and 99% of the time they won’t figure to squeeze the cap, they’ll just let go and it’ll fall.

24

Learn to do the Balducci levitation (easily found on youtube). Practice it. Get good at it. It relies on a good angle (keep your back to them then turn to the left 45 degrees) and keeping them the right distance away from you. Works well to have them stand at the end of a hallway while you go 8-10 feet at the other end. While you can ocassionaly get a suprised reaction from an adult, kids are often left stunned by it.
Another one I love doing to small kids usually at the end of meal at a restaurant is to hold a paper or styrofoam cup in your right hand and secretly put a hole in it where your thumb is and stick your thumb in the hole. Pretend there’s still plenty of liquid in the cup by sipping from it and tell them you’ll make the cup leviatate.
Grasp it with both hands on the sides and hold it out facing the kids. Slowly pull your hands back a few inches while the cup is perched on the end of your thumb out of their view. You can shake your thumb a bit for effect.

25

I, uh, don’t get this one.

26

Never mind; glossed over the “indicate” part.

27

A magician shuffles a deck of cards and spreads it out in a big mess face down on the table. He says “I want you to pick out any random card, and slide it out in front of you face down like this,” puts his finger on a single card from the pile, and slides it in front of him. The 2 children do the same, each sliding out a card face down in front of them.

The magician looks at the first child, says “I predict that you have selected the queen of clubs”, grabs the face down card, looks at it as he adds it to his hand, and nods his head in satisfaction.

He looks at the second child, says “I predict that you have selected the four of diamonds,” and collects the card, again nodding to indicate that he predicted correctly.

“And I of course, have the ten of spades!” He picks up the card in front of him, again nodding smugly.

“What, you don’t believe me?” he asks. “Here is your queen of clubs, your four of diamonds, and of course, my ten of spades!” As he names each card, he flips it face up in front of its owner, and in each case, he is correct!

When shuffling, the magician took a peek at the bottom card (the queen of clubs), and when spreading the cards in a big mess, his first move was to push the cards forward, leaving that bottom card exposed. That was the card he selected for himself. He announced that card as his prediction for the first child, before taking the first child’s card (which was actually the four of diamonds). He then predicted the second child’s card to be the card he took from the first child, and his own card to be the card he took from the second child. The children never see the actual cards until the reveal, so they don’t know that they’re not getting their original cards back.

28

Tell the kids that you have an incredibly keen sense of smell, and that you are able to tell from the odor which (one or more) of a number of coins has been recently rubbed between their palms.
Place five or six coins on a table, and tell the kids to rub one or more of them for four seconds or so between their palms, then put them back, all this while your back is turned (or even better, while you are out of the room).
Returned, you pick up the coins one by one, put them to your nose, smell them and can immediately tell whether that particular coin was rubbed or not.

This is the way it works: when you lift the coin to your nose, you let it touch your upper lip, which is very good at sensing the temperature of things. Even after 45 seconds there is a marked temperature difference between the rubbed and unrubbed coins!

29

The pencil up the nose trick is good for young kids because it is visual and easy to understand. I like to wipe the pencil off on their shirt for added effect after the trick.

30

Also works great at Benihana with chopsticks!

31

I learned this one while working as a volunteer at the St. Louis Science Center. Easy and quick and doesn’t need a deck of cards. It also has the advantage of being a teaching tool and something the kids can try and do themselves once they understand it.

Cut out a piece of paper the size of a dollar bill (or get some of those gag-Million $ novelty bills; the goal is to have a straight (non-wrinkled) piece of paper. A Dollar Bill can be used, but since they are often torn and wrinkled, it sometimes doesn’t work as well.

Hold the bill by your finger and thumb and drop it, catching it with your other hands’ finger and thumb. Make it look easy, with the catching digits far apart. Then ask the kid(s) to catch it. Be careful, sometimes they twitch and grab it just before you drop it. I’ve found keeping up a running conversation helps with the distraction.

If you do it right, they’ll never catch it, no matter how close they hold thier finger or thumb. Works on adults, too, albeit they are often clever enough to read the ‘tells’ on when you let go.

You can then help them figure out that it takes time for their eyes to see it drop, and for their brain to tell their fingers to grab it, while your brain does both things at the same time. Then set them loose on the adults and other kids…

32

In a similar vein, there is the “Trained Flea” schtick. Hold out a piece of paper supported by a pencil. The pencil is held just in your hand with the paper trapped between it and your thumb. Give a patter about your trained flea, tell it to do an acrobatic jump and follow it with your eyes. As it “lands”, push with you thumb and the paper will slip slightly against the pencil and make a popping sound. :wink:

Another slightly gross one (taught to me by a kid) is to tell a patter about having a broken / artificial / whatever nose. Demonstrate by cupping your hands over it with the tips of the fingers on either side of your nose. Hidden by them, you hook your thumbnail behind a front tooth, then, as you push / pull / twist your nose, click your thumbnail by jerking it over your tooth. :eek:

33

You know that bit where you put one hand on your temple, and your other hand on your jaw, and twist, and maybe you get what sounds like cracking a knuckle?

Yeah, so, before doing that, you awe the kids by covertly placing a big flat uncooked pasta noodle between your top and bottom back teeth.

34

The first time I saw the Balducci levitation I was absolutely gob-smacked for a couple of seconds. I then spent a couple of hours trying to work out how it was done (credit to the magician - he didn’t repeat it - his schtick was he didn’t even announce it - it ‘just happened’).

Very easy to do - but as described it’s all in the set-up of angles distances etc. Plenty of youtubes available.

35

Here’s a trio of non-magic tricks I love to use, in ascending order of easiness.

  1. Hey, kid, I bet you can’t stick out your tongue and touch your nose! (The rare kid can do it, at which point you compliment their leet skills and challenge them to stick out their tongue and touch their eyebrow). Best done with a crowd of kids, watching them stick their tongues out and go crosseyed. Then you demonstrate: melodramatically cross your own eyes, stick out your tongue, then touch your nose with your index finger.

  2. “Hey, kid, try this! Make a hole with your thumb and index finger, like so. Now poke your head through this hole without taking your fingers apart.” A surprising number of kids will try this for a surprisingly long time before giving up. At which point you make a big stinkin deal out of making a hole with your right thumb and forefinger, bringing it up to your forehead, and with your left index finger poking your head, through the hole.

  3. You may have seen this one on Cheers. You need a hat, a large bowl, or something similar, plus a cup of water or the like. “Hey kid, I have mad magic skills. I’m gonna put my hat over this cup of water, and then I can drink the water without touching the hat! Think I can do it?” Set the cup on a table, set the hat over the cup of water, then go under the table and make gross slurping noises. Come back up. “Oh yeah! Did it again! Who da man? I DA MAN! Oh yeah, Magic Man!” Generally carry on being as obnoxiously smug as you can, until an irritated kid takes the hat off the cup to inspect the water–at which point you instantly change to all business, grab the cup, drain it, and look glinty-eyed at the kid. They’ll howl with protest, and you shake your head. “Didn’t touch the cup, did I?”

36

You need 3 empty drinking glasses or cups/mugs for this. It works better if your mark is sitting across from you. Arrange the glasses in a horizontal line, with the middle one rightside up and the outer ones upside down. Let’s call them 1, 2, and 3. Tell your mark to “Watch this”, and flip the glasses over 2 at a time like this: 1&2, 1&2, 1&3. After 3 flips, all 3 glasses will be rightside up. Mention they’re all up and you only get to flip 2 glasses 3 times. Turn the outside glasses over again as you say, “Watch, I’ll do it again”. Repeat 1&2, 1&2, 1&3 again and again, all 3 glasses will be right side up. . Then you push the glasses toward him, flip #2 upside down, and say “You try it!”. They’ll all be upside down. As you tell him “No, you do it like this” you flip #2 right side up and repeat: 1&2, 1&2, 1&3. Then you flip #2 upside down and tell him “You try it”.

I suppose if you were that sort of person, starting with the first time you let him try it, you could lay down a dollar bill and get him to put up one himself. And continue each time. You could do that, but that could be wrong. :wink:

37

Did you mean to say, “Didn’t touch the HAT, did I?”

38

:smack: Yup.

39

For younger kids, I have great luck with the “upside-down dollar” trick. Show the kid a dollar bill, face up, and tell them you will magically turn it upside-down right before their eyes. Holding it right in front of them, fold it twice, first longways (top to bottom), then fold the right half in front of the left. If you want, snap your fingers and ask if they saw it flip. Now, unfold the bill, but instead of unfolding the same way, unfold from the back side first. That way, when you open the lengthwise fold to show the front of the bill, it will have “flipped”. Really amazes the little ones.

For kids old enough to do some math: tell the kid you’re going to write down a prediction. Cover the paper and write “6801”, fold it, and leave the paper where the kid can see it.

Now the math: tell the kid to pick a random three-digit number where the digits are different, like 321. Let’s say he picks 749. Tell him to reverse the order of the digits, and subtract the smaller one from the bigger one. So, reversed it would be 947, and 947 minus 749 is 198. Tell the kid to take the new number, reverse it again, and this time add them together. So, 198 plus 891 is 1089. Triumphantly show the kid your prediction. When he laughs at you, turn the “6801” upside-down: 1089. The trick works with any three digit number, but you do have to tell them to make the digits different so that they don’t pick “666” or something that won’t reverse.

40

This is super simple trick that will amaze both kids and adults alike!

The trick: Show your audience the Ace, 2 and 3 of diamonds.
Set them down on the table (face down).
Make a big show of putting the Ace into the middle of the deck,
the 2 on the top of the deck
and the 3 at the bottom of the deck.

Show the 2 and 3 to the audience as you place them.
Then have someone in your audience cut the deck.
Fan out the cards to reveal that the A, 2 and 3 of diamonds are now joined together, in sequence.

The Setup
Before you start, secretly take the Ace of diamonds and place it on top of the deck.
Now take The Ace of hearts, and the 2 and 3 of diamonds and hold them in such a way that the Ace of hearts is upside down (the center heart pip has the pointy end of the heart aiming up), then position the 2 and 3 of diamonds in a V formation over the ace to disguise the Ace of hearts into looking like the Ace of Diamonds. The V formation of the other two cards makes the upside heart look like the top of a diamond.

I found this youtube video that shows what I mean.


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