There's a hole in a piece of paper exactly the size of a small coin. You hand your friend a much bigger coin and ask them to get it through without tearing anything. When they give up, you do it.
🌟 Level 1: Apprentice
⏱ 5 minutes to learn
🪙 Coins
🎒 Ages 6+
Works by itself, or one simple move. It works the first try.
👶 Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.✂️ Cutting! Ask a grown-up to help, and cut only paper, card or string.👶 Coins are a choking risk for little ones under 4: keep them off the floor and out of small hands.
Thousands. But almost every one of them is built from just eight ideas: making something vanish, making something appear, changing it, moving it, floating it, passing it through something solid, mending it, or knowing the answer in advance. Once you can spot the eight, you can see how any trick is put together.
How do magicians do their tricks?
Magicians use secrets. Some secrets are hidden objects, some are special ways of holding things, and some are clever maths. The biggest secret of all is attention: a magician gets you to look at one thing while the secret happens somewhere else. Then they practise until it looks like nothing at all.
The Coin Through a Small Hole for kids: the whole trick
There's a hole in a piece of paper exactly the size of a small coin. You hand your friend a much bigger coin and ask them to get it through without tearing anything. When they give up, you do it. It's a level 1 apprentice trick for ages 6 to 11 (grades 1st–5th), takes 5 minutes to learn, and needs 4 things you already have. Flick, the shop's rabbit, reads every step aloud with a picture, so a child can follow it alone, and one step is marked for a grown-up.
The secret
Folding the paper across the hole and then bending the ends upwards stretches the hole into a long slit, and a slit is much wider than a circle.
What you need
A sheet of paper
A dime, or any small coin
A quarter, or any big coin
Kid scissors
How to do it
Draw round the dime in the middle of the paper.
Grown-up step: A grown-up cuts the little circle out with the scissors.
Hand the quarter over and ask them to push it through the hole. They can't.
Take it back. Fold the paper in half, straight across the hole.
Drop the quarter into the fold so it sits in the hole.
Hold both ends and bend them up towards each other. The coin drops through.
Magic words to say
“It's not the size of the hole that matters. It's the size of your imagination. Go on, have a go. No tearing!”
Pro tips
Let them struggle with it for a good thirty seconds first. The longer they try, the better your version looks.
Hand the paper and both coins over afterwards so they can work it out. This one is more fun shared.
Do it with a hole the size of a pea and a big coin for the biggest reaction.
If something goes wrong
If the paper tears, laugh and say you got too excited. Cut a fresh hole, and this time bend the ends more gently.
Safety notes
Small parts! Keep them away from little brothers and sisters, and never put one in your mouth.
Cutting! Ask a grown-up to help, and cut only paper, card or string.
Coins are a choking risk for little ones under 4: keep them off the floor and out of small hands.
Sit at a table.
No fire, no flames and nothing sharp in a child's hand anywhere in the Magic Shop. Nothing ever goes in a mouth, a nose or an ear.
What kind of trick is this?
⭕ Penetration. Something passes through something solid. Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight kinds, and knowing which one you're watching is how magicians work out how a new trick is done.
The skill it teaches:Patter: what you say. A trick is a story, not a thing that happens. Perform it and it counts towards the Coin Conjurer badge.
Questions about the coin through a small hole
How many magic tricks are there?
Thousands. But almost every one of them is built from just eight ideas: making something vanish, making something appear, changing it, moving it, floating it, passing it through something solid, mending it, or knowing the answer in advance. Once you can spot the eight, you can see how any trick is put together.
How do magicians do their tricks?
Magicians use secrets. Some secrets are hidden objects, some are special ways of holding things, and some are clever maths. The biggest secret of all is attention: a magician gets you to look at one thing while the secret happens somewhere else. Then they practise until it looks like nothing at all.