Easy magic tricks for kids

Easy magic tricks by age

• Ages 5 to 7. Visual tricks with nothing to remember, and a grown-up in the room: the rubber pencil trick, the floating pencil trick, the ghost pencil trick, the thumb off trick, the salt shaker balance and the spooky floating cup.
• Ages 7 to 9. First card tricks, first coin trick, first mind reading: the 21 card trick, the four aces trick, the countdown card, the rising card, the levitating card and three friends, three cards.
• Ages 9 to 12. Tricks with real setting up, and a routine to practise over days: the jumping rubber band trick, the haunted rubber band, the broken toothpick restored, easy cups and balls and race to 100.

Magic tricks by what's in your hand

How a trick page works

1. What your audience sees. Two or three sentences, read aloud, so a child knows what they're aiming at before they learn anything.
2. The secret, behind one tap. Opening it is the moment a child joins the shop, and the page then asks them to keep it.
3. The steps, one at a time, with a drawn picture that loops and one short sentence read aloud. A grown-up step says so out loud first and its button reads "A grown-up helped".
4. The words to say, the pro tips, and an "out" for when it goes wrong.
5. Did you show somebody? Three taps: still practising, I can do it, I showed somebody. The third one earns a badge, and it's the only one that counts.

Maths and science hiding in the tricks

The 16 mind-reading tricks are arithmetic in a cape — place value, the nine times table, binary, and the fact that opposite faces of a die always add up to seven — and each one carries a "why it works" box for older children. The 10 kitchen-science tricks each carry a "science behind the spell" box: surface tension, air pressure, refraction, static, fluorescence. Every number trick in the shop was checked by running the maths over every possible input.

Safety

Every step that uses something hot or a bright light is a grown-up's step, whatever the child's age, and Flick says so out loud before it. There is no fire, no flame and nothing sharp in a child's hand anywhere in the shop: scissors cut paper, card and string only, and a cutting step says to ask a grown-up. No trick asks a child to put anything in a mouth, a nose or an ear. Tricks with coins, dice, paperclips or pom-poms carry the AAP's choking note for brothers and sisters under 4, and none of them is offered below kindergarten. The kitchen-science tricks use only food-safe things, and a potion is always for looking at, not for drinking.

Questions parents ask

What's the easiest magic trick for a child to learn?

The Rubber Pencil. Hold a pencil loosely near one end, wiggle your hand, and it looks bendy. A minute to learn, and it works the first time.

How long does it take to learn a magic trick?

Five to ten minutes for a level 1 trick, fifteen or twenty for a level 2, and days of practice for a level 3. The rule magicians use: practise until you can do it ten times in a row without looking at your hands, and then perform it.

My child gets frustrated when a trick fails.

Start with the level 1 tricks, which work straight away, and read the "if something goes wrong" line before performing, not after. Every trick in the shop has one, because having a line ready is the actual skill.

Are the tricks free?

The Magic Shop is free, with no ads and no sign-up. What your child has, has learned and has performed stays on their own device and is never sent anywhere, so there is nothing to lose and no account to make.

More: all 80 magic tricks for kids, Magic School and how to put on a magic show.