The magic of it all

Firefly has had a fascination with magic for quite some time.  He has several beginner magic sets (with pieces that are now all over the house, so some of the tricks… well… some work), but in the past few weeks he has really gotten pretty good at magic tricks.  We found some videos for kids online, and he will watch them (with headphones on so NO ONE can hear the secrets) and then practice, and then of course he will perform.  There are some tricks that I’ve helped him with, and therefore know the secret, and there are some where he still needs to work a bit on his slight of hand and smoothness, but there are some that he does that have truly baffled me, and I can’t figure them out.  Its been really interesting watching him not only improve on his ability to do the tricks, but also watching his understanding of what it means to have an audience and how to interact with the people you are performing for.

Firefly’s school does show and tell as “sharing days” and each child is assigned a day and to bring in items to share.  Today was Firefly’s day and the theme was to bring in items that will tell the class a little bit more about himself.  He brought in a lock (he has been obsessed with Master Locks for a few weeks, I have no idea why, but he loves to do the combination), a card game he enjoys, a multi-color pen, a pot holder that he made, and a rope with which to do a magic trick.  During the trick he wraps the rope around his neck and then “penetrates” it through his neck.  I had to work with him on his performance technique on this one because his original lead in line was, “Watch now as I kill myself- just kidding!”  So yeah, we revised that, and his talked with his teacher before the trick and she had him do a disclaimer for the class.  The video below is a little hard to see the trick, but you get to see how he interacts with his class and how much he loves being up in front of them.