September 5th, 2008
How would you like to have every child in the audience laughing and enjoying themselves? How would you like the parents, or whoever is hiring you, to be so impressed they hire you to come back next year and perform? You can have a successful show and repeat performances if you follow my four tips for doing magic for kids.
Kids are in a world of their own. To succeed with them you will need to forget all the sleight of hand you learned. All those funny punch lines that worked great for adults won’t work on children. Children don’t want to see all your hocus pocus miracles, they just want to be entertained. With that in mind, here is a list of things you must do in order to have a successful children’s magic show.
1. Audience Participation Is A Must
Children love to be part of the show. Include them in almost every trick. There are two types of audience participation. Bring a child from the audience up to help with a trick, or ask the audience to stay in their seats and participate by shouting out magic words, etc.
2. Use A Magic Word
Children always love to think they are creating magic through the use of a magic word. Now you shouldn’t use just any old word. Most magicians use “Hocus pocus” or “abracadabra”. I have found better success using just some random crazy word, like “Penguin” or “I love turtles”. Most everyone is expecting a magic type of phrase, so when you blurt out a random word or phrase, it catches him or her off guard. Children love silly and it’s always good for a laugh.
I also recommend you use your sponsor’s name as the magic word. After all, they are paying your salary. Another great phrase to use as the magic word is “Happy Birthday ______”. You insert the birthday boy or girls name in the blank.
3. Forget The Adults
At many parties where I performed, there were also a lot of adults. Sometimes almost three to one. Just remember you are there to do magic tricks for kids, not the adults. So forget about them and concentrate on the children.
4. Use Lots Of Visual Gags
Children love this more than the hocus pocus. You could enter with one shoe untied. You trip over the loose shoelace. As you bend over to tie the shoelace you hear a large ripping sound and everyone thinks you ripped your pants (insert laughter here). You stand up and comically try to look at your behind (more laughter). Just doing gag after gag will keep the kids laughing. Make sure to sprinkle some magic tricks in for the kids too.
Just applying these four rules when doing magic tricks for kids, will ensure everyone has fun. That after all should be what the goal is. Time for the parents to relax and for the kids to be entertained. So don’t worry about all the fancy mumbo jumbo, get out there and just have fun.
To learn how to make your own magic props for your shows, read..
Magic Tricks Revealed – How To Design Your Own Magic Tricks
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September 5th, 2008
You can be the hit of the party and impress your friends and family by simply taking easy to perform, simple magic tricks and turning them into mind-blowing miracles. See the world and achieve untold riches, this is all possible as a person who can perform miracles.
The first thing you need to do is to break a simple magic trick down into the components that make up the trick. For example, you’ve probably seen a million times the simple trick of a spectator picking a card from playing deck and the magician finding it. Simple enough. Here’s what actually makes up this trick:
1. A spectator selects a card.
2. A spectator returns the card.
3. Magician finds the card.
A beginner may just fan the deck and have a spectator pick a card. The current method most all magicians are now using is a riffle of the deck while asking the spectator to stay stop. This actually makes it appear that the card they selected is a random one. You have probably seen magicians do this with their card tricks.
Unfortunately, we want to do miracles. So let’s take the selection component of the magic trick and turn it into a miracle. What if we picked someone from the audience? We gave them a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. We take a deck of cards and fan it open, facing towards the spectator and away from the magician. We ask the spectator to just think of one of the cards. No touching of cards. Nothing is removed from the deck. At this point you have a 1 in 52 chance of getting the card right (of course you’ll get it right everytime).
I believe this method of selection causes a much bigger impact because the spectator is only THINKING of a card and there is no way anyone could know except a true magician
Now we move to the second component. We need a way for her to return the card so we can later announce it in component three. How about if you have her write the card she is thinking of on a large piece of paper. You have her fold the paper into fourths so it’s about the size of a paperback book. Then you have her initial the top of the folded paper. She then holds her arm high so everyone can see the paper with her initials and with her holding it (not the magician).
Now it’s time for component three. Find the card. There are many ways to accomplish this. Here is one you may be familiar with. The magician picks up a deck of cards and throws it again the wall. While the deck falls to the ground, one card is seen stuck to the wall. Is it the selected card?
You ask the spectator if she has ever let go of that paper, of course she says no. She’s been holding it in plain sight the whole time. Without the magician touching it, she unfolds the paper to show the card she was thinking of is indeed the card stuck to the wall.
By following the blueprint I have set out here, you should easily be able to dissect any magic trick into its components. By taking those components and finding ways to make each one seem impossible, the combined resulting effect will seem to be a miracle.
For more of my secrets on performing magic, please read:
Learn How To Perform Magic – 5 Things You Must Do To Be A Success
Need more tricks you can convert into miracles?
Read my review of an amazing product that offers hundreds of magic tricks that you can download and learn right now.