I'm thinking of kids from around 3-5th grade.

Maybe Bro. John's Twins?

Any easy card control to teach?

Any other ideas? thanks for any help.

From long experience with teaching kids of various ages any card based trick is a mistake. It will be just that - a trick.

You can get magic sets for about $5.00 each/ Put on a show that includes two of these effects.
Then, at home, they can learn the "secret" and also that what you did was more than what came in the box.
Then there are other effects to explore on their own and perform for friends that are NOT a copy of you.

Best part is that perhaps one in five will contact you to learn more.

Point is that you cannot teach "magic." If you only want teach 'tricks', give them Chinese Finger Traps.

What age is that???

About 8-10 years old

Thanks for the advice (funsway). This is basically for a school raffle, where I'm offering to teach a couple tricks to 'winning bidders'.

Come to think of it, 'color vision' might be good for this (good effect, variety of presentation, fun prob, easy, enough, to perform and teach)...yes?

That’s about the age that a lot of kids receive a magic set as a birthday or holiday gift, so you might let old-school magic sets (like the then-ubiquitous Adams set) be your guide. Any combination of just about any of the effects included in those old sets would probably work just fine.

On the other hand, going this route involves supplying props and gaffs, even if inexpensive ones (plastic ball vases, plastic cups & balls, plastic rice bowls, brass nickles to dimes, small sponge balls for small hands, etc.). But you did mention Color Vision, so….

From long experience with teaching kids of various ages to think "any card based trick is a mistake" is a mistake. Older children for example LOVE the magic trick Svengali deck. If you perform the trick well at the beginning, many children will be enthusiastic about it. And they also like the secret and, above all, the fact that they can learn the trick relatively quickly and amaze other people with it. There are few tricks that excite beginners as much as the Svengali Deck. This is one reason why the trick is sold so often.

The trick list from karnak is very good! Some more tricks suitable for beginners:
- 50 50 forcing deck (buy 26 cheap deck of cards and turn them into 26 trick decks)
- The card trick where you lay four jacks next to each other, then on top four queens, then four kings, then four aces. Turn the piles over and lay them on top of each other. Give the pile a cut often. Distribute the cards into four piles again. At the end, there are four identical cards in each pile.
- The spectator thinks of a number between 1 and 63, should say which box contains his number, then the magician can name the number. This trick can be on one piece of paper.
- Paddle trick
- Crazy cubes (Dice in two doses)
- Ring on chain (to throw a ring onto a chain)
- Houdini beads
- To show two playing cards from both sides and make a bill appear between the cards

Yes, Danial, you confirmed what I said. If you want to teach them a TRICK - cards are fine. If you want to introduce them to magic, it is not the best choice.

The very fact that a trick is very popular and widely sold is a reason to NOT teach it to select students.

Ken from my point of view the card trick Svengali deck is a fantastric trick to introduce older children to magic. It is a trick that lots of successfull magicians introduced to magic. I don't know if you know the Svengali routine by Mark Lewis, in my view as his manuscript claims the best Svengali routine in the world with fantastic and unbelievable effects. Learning this routine can be a very good introduction to magic. You see things differently. Our different views probably depend on the definition of the word magic. For me the routine by Mark Lewis is great magic.

More than definition, m'thinks. The issue here is "what to teach," - not "what is easy or popular."

Decades ago I was part of an after-school magic program for junior-high and high schools. (for free)
Typically, twenty-thirty would sign up. When they learned that each person would have to learn a new effect, practice it, and perform the next week -
half of them disappeared.

After a couple of weeks, some kids gravitated to card tricks and did not want to learn anything else.
They left to entertain friends, impress girls, whatever. A different form of, "I'll show you mine if you show me yours."

The few that remained mastered a variety of venues and favorite effects, leading to a school show.
No one offered to do a card trick for the show even though several now had advanced moves.
They did not want to perform "What was popular" or could be bought from a rack at All-a-Dollar.

Yes, it might be wise for very young magician to get a Svengali deck and play with it. I would never "teach it."

Yes, for me the important "magic" is seeing a shy, disabled twelve-year old grow to captivate a large audience of friends, parents and teachers.

It is not worth my time to teach a card trick already known to a majority of kids.