This morning I told Nefarious that when I got home from dropping her off at school, I was going to write down an object, and when she got home, she could choose one of three objects, and it would turn out to be the one I had written down, showing that I could predict what she would choose. She was amazed for a moment, and, a few minutes later, declared that she could do the magic trick as well.
She took out an envelope, and spent a moment writing in secret, and then put it down on the table, holding her hand over part of it. She asked me to choose an object — a piggy bank, a BB gun, or a stuffed bunny toy. I chose the gun, and she took her hand off of the part of the envelope she’d been covering, and said, “see, I knew you were going to pick the gun first!”
Then took the gun off the table, and said, “ok, what’s your second choice?”
I picked the bunny toy, and she said, “I knew you’d pick that next,” and opened the envelope, showing me her drawing of the bunny toy.
Taking the bunny toy off the table, she flipped over the envelope, revealing her final drawing and stating that “only the piggy bank is left.”
The trick is probably more effective with the second two reveals left out entirely — best to just get the first one right and then destroy the evidence of how it’s done — but I was impressed how she instantly picked up on the concept of being able to present any of the options she needed as the answer to match my choice. She hasn’t figured out the mechanics behind card tricks yet though (mostly due to having tiny hands), so practicing those will fill some of my time…
Other than that, she’s now swimming the full length of the pool without problem and is quite happy diving into the deep end, as well as swimming to the bottom to retrieve objects.
