Magic tricks for kids: a guide for grown-ups

The Peabody Magic Shop teaches children 80 real magic tricks using things that are already in your house: a pencil, a coin, a deck of cards, a rubber band, a cup, paper, string, dice, a calculator and a few kitchen staples. Nothing to buy, no sign-up, no ads. It is run by Flick, a shopkeeping rabbit who reads every step aloud.

Why magic, specifically

Learning a trick means following steps in order, practising something until it works, and then standing in front of people and talking. That last part is the unusual bit: most activities end with the thing you made, and this one ends with somebody else's face. Magicians and teachers have long argued it builds confidence, and a handful of small studies point the same way — we are reading those at the source before we write them up, rather than quoting numbers we haven't checked.

What we can say plainly is what the shop actually asks of a child: read a short instruction, do it in order, repeat it until it is boring, decide what to say, and then perform. That is a lot of useful work for something a child does because they want to.

How it is organised

Every trick carries a recommended age range, a learn time in minutes (or, for the hardest ones, honestly in days), and the exact list of what you need. 8 of them need nothing at all, which makes them the ones for a car journey.

Our safety promises

• No fire, flames, candles or matches in any trick, including the Halloween ones. The spooky pages say to use a torch instead, and the words are refused by the test that checks every trick before it can be published.
• Nothing sharp in a child's hand but kid scissors, which cut paper, card and string only. A cutting step says to ask a grown-up. There are no knives anywhere in the shop.
• Nothing goes in a mouth, a nose or an ear. The classic coin trick happens behind an ear, never in one, and the phrases that would break this rule are refused outright.
• Anything hot or a bright light is a grown-up's step, whatever the child's age, and Flick says so out loud before it. 6 of the 80 tricks have such a step.
• Choking notes for little ones. Coins, dice, paperclips and pom-poms carry the AAP's note for brothers and sisters under 4, read off the prop itself so no page can forget it, and no trick with small parts is offered below kindergarten.
• The kitchen-science tricks use only food-safe things, and a potion is always for looking at, not for drinking.
• Loops go on wrists, never necks, in any string trick.
• We never ask a child to post a video of themselves, name a platform, or share anything about themselves. The shop says “show your family”.
• No gambling language and no trick whose point is that somebody looks foolish. The Magician's Code in here has a fourth promise: always be kind to your helpers.

These are not a policy document: they are enforced in code. A trick that breaks any of them fails the build and never reaches the site.

For teachers: magic across the curriculum

Every trick on the The Potion Lab carries a “science behind the trick” box and every trick on the The Mind Reader's Corner a “why it works” box, written for an older child. The maths in all of them was checked by running it over every possible input.

The maths, trick by trick

The Mind Reader's Corner is arithmetic in a cape, and each trick has one topic doing the work. A child who performs one has practised that topic more carefully than a worksheet would have got out of them, because getting it wrong in front of somebody matters to them.

The printables page has the secret number cards ready to cut out, which is the quickest way to put binary in front of a class: they meet it as a trick before anybody calls it binary.

A forty-five-minute lesson: science or trick?

1. 5 min. Perform Pepper Scatter and the Arrow Flip without explaining anything.
2. 10 min. Students predict how each one works, in pairs, in writing.
3. 15 min. Pairs try both tricks and test their own explanation.
4. 10 min. Reveal the science. Both pages have it written for a child.
5. 5 min. Each student writes one sentence of patter for the trick they liked best.

The eight kinds of trick

Almost every trick ever invented is one of eight ideas, and naming them is a surprisingly good thinking exercise: vanish, production, transformation, transposition, levitation, penetration, restoration, prediction. Every trick page says which one it is.

Questions grown-ups ask

Is it a problem if my child shows a friend the secret?

Teaching a trick is excellent learning, and this is the most common way magicians are made. We just suggest they perform it first and teach it afterwards, which is also what the Magician's Code says.

My child gets frustrated when a trick fails.

Start on level 1, where tricks work the first time, and read the “if something goes wrong” line before performing rather than after. Having a line ready is the actual skill, and one of the seven lessons is about nothing else.

Do we need a magic set?

No. If your child still loves it after a few weeks, a kit or a magic book from the library is a good next step.

Is any of this stored or sent anywhere?

No. What your child has, has learned and has performed stays in their own browser on their own device. There is no account, nothing is uploaded, and the badges are worked out on the device each time rather than stored anywhere.

What age is it for?

Five and up. Children of five and six do best with the visual tricks and a grown-up in the room; every trick lists its own age range, and the shop puts the ones that fit your child's grade first.

Where to start

The shop itself, or how to do magic tricks if your child wants the whole thing from the beginning. There are 40 questions answered, 7 lessons on performing, and four ready-made shows. For a rainy afternoon, the Rainy Day Box and the Kitchen are the shop's nearest neighbours.

Running a school or library club? Six free club sessions and how children join a magic club.