I just love magic sets. Really, they are a great educational toy for kindergartners on up. All too often I’ve found though, those little magic sets you can buy just about anywhere are filled with easy to break, cheap plastic doo-dads and indecipherable instructions.

For a high quality Magic Set, look no further than your local purveyor of Melissa and Doug Toys. I generally find that Melissa and Doug toys, though often made in China are high quality and focus on encouraging imaginative play. This magic set is no exception. With pieces made of sturdy wood and a storage case that converts to a performance table, this kit if easy to set up and easy to put away, without losing many tiny pieces. And it does include quite a number of pieces, which for budding magicians is both practical and inspiring.

Included are tools to perform many of the easiest and most famous tricks used by professional magicians including: Disappearing Ball, Vanishing Coin, Magic Coin Box, Cylinder Squeeze, Secret Silks, Vanishing Zone, Egyptian Prediction, Magic Number Prediction, Money Maker and the Great Escape.

Though it’s listed for children ages 8 and up, many younger children will find this fascinating and will be able to perform many of the tricks with a little help. Since magic is a hobby that  requires developing eye hand coordination, thinking skills AND requires an audience, you can’t help but find it preferable to a hand held video games if you worry about too much solitary, unsupervised play.