Secrets of the Wand – A Magical Magicians Week: Intro Day

This post may contain affiliate links. If you choose to make a purchase after clicking a link, we may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Welcome to our “Secrets of the Wand – A Magical Magicians Week” – an at home week filled with days of relaxed learning and fun activities all themed to oh-so-mesmerizing magicians!!! While we definitely carved out some time to become master magicians, this week was more focused on the history of magic and some famous magicians! And in addition to learning all about the history of magic and about some groundbreaking magicians, we also conjured up some crafts and created our own magical stories!

Like most of our at home camp weeks, we kicked off the week by easing into the topic. We started off with setting up the camp area with some DIY crafts and decorations (many that we also used for our Ultimate Magicians Party! And, like all days, we added in some interesting books and some writing / storytelling prompts to keep them learning! Read on to check out the fun!

INTRO

Almost every child is familiar – at least in some capacity – with the magic and magicians! This week, we used that familiarity and magic excitement to bring in some great learning concepts! We started off the week by learning about the history of magic – how it was viewed in ancient times all the way through understanding how modern magic came to be.

Here are some great articles for some background information for your little ones (or you to brush up on!)

Once they’d been fully immersed into the topic and super excited, then it was off to setting up the camp area – always a fun activity – and reading, writing, crafting, and experiments!

DECORATE THE CAMP AREA

Decorating the ‘Camp Area’ or the room / area of your house where you’ll have most of your activities is a great way to get the kids excited about the theme of the week! If they’re incredibly crafty and creative, having some extra and opened-ended crafts would be great to keep them engaged. Otherwise, a prepared activity would work well!

For our camp area, we brought out our Mini Plush Rabbits and Mini Hats and several card decks 🙂 We also put up our Magic posters from our Ultimate Magicians Party; however, it looks like they’re no longer available for purchase online. Luckily, you can still find other magician posters in stores and online as well!

WEEKLONG PROJECT

Magician's Week - Intro Day - STEM Activity of the Day

In addition to introducing the topic of the week, we try to give the kids a week-long project to help reinforce what they learn throughout the day.

Our project of the week was – of course – for our kiddos to put on a magic show! We did purchase a NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC Science Magic Kit for the STEM portion of the entire week, so they could opt to do those experiments OR add in any of their own that they learned.

In addition to their actual magic show, they needed to create a flyer to “post” and generate excitement for their show! They also were responsible for their own costumes, ‘set designs’, and programs (complete with a magician’s bio – for their fictional magician, of course!).

WHAT TO WATCH

Magician's Week - Intro Day - Snack of the Day

We find that mixing in a short video themed to our day is a great way to add some learning fun! We try to pick informative videos OR mix in a cartoon favorite (where they don’t even realize they’re learning). Here are some of the videos we picked from for the day:

FOOD CRAFTS / SNACKS

What’s more fun than taking a break and having a simple snack??? Including the snack in your theme of the day! We find that our kiddos are more than happy to eat the snacks they create especially when they can arrange them into fun shapes and scenes!

For our snack of the day, we attempted to make some pretzel wands using melted chocolate and mini pretzels 🙂

READING

Magician's Week - Intro Day - Book of the Day

It’s no secret that reading is an important part of learning, which is why we pick out a handful of books that are fun and filled with some learning tidbits. For our older ones, we have them fill out some worksheets (or let them create some of their own comics) to describe what they read and/or learned! These are a few we picked from for the day:

Children’s Book of Magic by DK
Abracadabra: The Story of Magic Through the Age by HP Newquist

WRITING & WRITING PROMPTS

Magician's Week - Intro Day - Writing Prompt

Just like reading, writing is a great way to keep kids learning by both encouraging their creativity and thought process as well as helping them practice their motor skills and penmanship.

If you’ve got a little one, have them trace words related to the theme: MAGIC, MAGICIAN, ILLUSION

If you’ve got older children, have them write a sentence or two up to a page or two (depending on their age). Encourage them to be creative AND give reasons for why they made certain choices. This was our writing prompt of the day but definitely pick something your kiddo might be interested in writing about!

Imagine you were just invited to join a secret society of magicians who have passed down their knowledge since ancient times. Write a short story about the challenges of keeping your society a secret in modern times!
Write a short story about a precious magical artifact that only works with your magic!

THANK YOU!!!

Thank you for checking out our at home learning fun article! If you enjoyed this post, please let us know what you think in the comments below and/or follow us on Pinterest

Also, if you haven’t already, check out some of our other Magic Ideas days as well as our DIY At Home Camps!

Happy Learning!