Reading Kid's Minds

Discuss the art of Children's Entertainment with your fellow performers.
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Spellbinder
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Reading Kid's Minds

Postby Spellbinder » January 26th, 2022, 10:39 pm

Mentalism generally isn't considered magic for children, but there are a few times when you can play "I know what you're thinking" with a child and amaze not only the child, but get a clamor of "Tell me what I'm thinking!" from the other kids in your audience. Some examples of these are:

Animal Hunter Revisited - from The Wizards' Journal #43-01 https://www.magicnook.com/WizJ43/wizj43-01AnimalHunter.htm
Santa Mental from Mini-Mysteries 4 https://www.magicnook.com/MiniMysteries/MysteriesTOC04.htm#Santa-Mental
Mind Reading Puppets from The Wizards' Journal #18-01 https://www.magicnook.com/WizJournal/WJ-18ALL.htm#Mind-Reading%20Puppets
Divination Discs from The Wizards' Journal #31-01 https://www.magicnook.com/WizJournal/WJ-31ALL.htm#DivinationDiscs

Plus a few more scattered about The Magic Nook materials.
Phineas Spellbinder
The Magic Nook

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Spellbinder
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Re: Reading Kid's Minds

Postby Spellbinder » August 22nd, 2022, 8:45 am

Jim Gerrish added a collection of mentalist effects designed for audiences of kids for The Wizards' Journal #47-09.
He states: "To young kids, all magic is mental magic." We start with a “Guess What I Am Thinking” game. You show a book (or several books) with pictures of objects that kids recognize, animals, fruit, toys, etc. The child chooses a page in the book, then takes a marking pen, selects a single object on the page and circles it. Then he closes the book and you go to work to “read his mind” and identify the object that he circled in the book.

That's just one of the mental magic effects for kids included in the e-Book.

https://www.magicnook.com/WizJournal/WJ-47ALL.htm#ThinkAgain
Phineas Spellbinder
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jplibby
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Re: Reading Kid's Minds

Postby jplibby » August 30th, 2022, 9:45 pm

Sometimes you can do a mental-type effect for kids shows. I did one for library shows where I forced a cartoony picture of Frankenstein's monster. The prediction was on a silk in a Crystal Cabinet.

After one show, the girl who helped me asked, "If I'd chosen a different monster, would the name that appeared have been different?" I could truthfully answer "Yes"!

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Re: Reading Kid's Minds

Postby Spellbinder » September 7th, 2022, 2:29 pm

An important part of any mental magic trick performed for kids is the magical revelation of what they were thinking of. One of my favorite revelations that gets great reactions from kids is what I call the "Phantom Artist Reveal." The kid whose mind you are reading hands you a blank sheet of paper and a pair of scissors and you begin clipping away on the paper until you can open it up and show (for example) that he was thinking of Frankenstein whose face you have just clipped out of the blank paper.
Image

You score "points" for not only reading his mind, but also for having the skill to turn a sheet of paper into a "portrait" of his thoughts.

More information can be found in The Wizard's Journal #18-02: https://www.magicnook.com/WIZJ18/wizj18-02ForceField.htm
Phineas Spellbinder
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