Hobbies And Interests
Pencil Tricks
Magician Robert Strong advises kids to start learning magic tricks using a pencil. In the first trick, you push a pencil up one nostril and it comes out your mouth. At least, it looks that way. To perform this trick, hold the pencil by the eraser in your left hand. Position the eraser under your nostril. Quickly bring your right hand up so that the pencil is covered by your right wrist and arm. It will seem to disappear into your nose. Then move your hands to your mouth, open your mouth and quickly drop your right hand back to its starting position. The pencil will appear to come out of your mouth.
In the second trick, tell your audience that you're going to make a pencil levitate. Hold the pencil vertically against your left palm so it extends past your hand in both directions. Make a fist with your right hand and hold it against the inside of your left wrist so that your audience can't see it. Extend your right forefinger and hold the pencil with it. Then turn your left hand with the palm downward. The pencil will appear to be suspended in space with no support.
Mystify your audience with a third pencil trick. Announce that you will drive the pencil through the middle of your hand. Hold your left hand out with the palm facing downward. Hold the pencil in your right hand. Take aim with the pencil, saying, "one," while exaggerating your movement so that your right hand travels all the way back to your ear and then to your palm. Repeat this movement again as you say "two," but when you say "three," quickly park the pencil behind your ear. Let your right hand continue to your left palm and look surprised because the pencil has disappeared.
Rubber Band Tricks
According to Tim the Magician of Tim's Tricks in Motion, you can make a rubber band magically jump from one side of your hand to the other. Place a rubber band on your pinkie finger and ring finger. Let the audience see only the back of your hand. On the palm side that's facing you, stretch the rubber band to cover all four of your fingers, but not your thumb. Raise your fingers straight up, and the rubber band will jump from your pinkie and ring fingers to your middle and index fingers. You can do this using two rubber bands, one on your pinkie and ring fingers and one on your middle and index fingers. It will look best if the rubber bands are two different colors. Put the rubber bands on in the same way, stretching both of them out on the palm side of your hand to cover all four fingers. When you raise your fingers straight up, the rubber bands will switch places.
Lemon Mentalism
Raid the refrigerator for the lemon mentalism trick. Featured on Easy Bar Tricks.com, this feat of magic will make you seem to possess psychic powers. Promise your audience that you can predict the number of sections in a lemon. Touch the lemon and appear to be concentrating on its essence. Then cut a slice from the end of the lemon and count its sections. You'll be right, because before you announced your trick, you pulled off the little stem on one end of the lemon. There, you saw a circle of little dots. When the lemon was growing on the tree, it received water and nutrients through those little dots, which were actually tubes, and each section had its own tube.