Magic Door is a technique for entering and exploring a new environment. By entering a place first through a magic door, the opportunity to hear, see, feel, and smell parts of the environment before entering asks children to engage all of their senses to fully imagine a new setting.
• Each participant can find a piece of imaginary chalk in their pocket, and guide all the students to draw the shape of a door.
Narrate the experience of opening a door into another world.
• Be sure to observe sensory elements before you open the door – e.g. how cold the handle is, or that there is frost on the window!
• Use active and vivid descriptions of the place you are entering.
• Then walk through the door and into the world of the pantomime.
Go back through the door (optional)
• When you walk back through the door and into your classroom, erase the magic door and blow all the dust away.
Sample narration after you have drawn the door:
“Let’s go into the jungle. Touch the handle of the door, it’s warm. Put your ear up next to the door and listen closely. There are birds squawking, and frogs croaking, I even hear a monkey howling! Oh wow. Let’s go through the door. Reach out and open the door - whoa the air is so warm and wet. There are vines hanging down all around us, and plants covering the floor…”
Transitioning into the setting of a story before you read (e.g. going into a jungle to read a book that takes place there)
Learning more contextual understanding about a particular type of location or weather (e.g. experiencing the cold metal of a doorknob and frost on the glass before we walk out into a crunchy snowbank)
Making an embodied memory of being in a location through movement and imagination even if you haven’t been there in real life!
Creating anticipation (e.g. using magic door to go to a birthday party and experiencing the many feelings that happen before you open the door.)
Going on a mini-field trip without leaving the classroom.
