April Fool's Day Classroom Ideas

Celebrate the value of humor in the classroom by having a competition to find out who is the funniest student in your class. Ask any students that wish to compete to create a 90 second comedy performance. Choose three students who are not competing to serve as the judges. After each performance each of the judges holds up a sign with a score from one to 10. The teacher totals their scores and writes it down next to the competitor's name in the score book. The student with the highest score is the class king or queen of comedy.

April Fool's Day is celebrated among many other countries, but it is know as All Fools' Day. Have each of the students research how the day is celebrated throughout the world. You could have the students work in teams of two to three and give each team an hour in the school library to research All Fools' Day throughout the world. Award a prize to the team that discovers the most traditions from other countries around the world.

Conduct a spelling bee in your classroom. This isn't just any spelling bee though, as the April Fool's version, each child has to spell the word assigned to her backwards. Choose words that follow the humor theme such as "joke," "fool," "laugh," "laughter" and "comedy." Just like a traditional spelling bee, each child is eliminated when she spells her word incorrectly.

Encourage your students to socialize and have some humorous fun. Give half of your class the first part of a joke on a piece of construction paper. Give the other half of the class the punch lines to the different jokes. Each student needs to find the other student that has the punch line for his joke. Once the students pair up, they should share three funny things about themselves, or that they have done in the past. Each student then writes down those funny things and tells the rest of the class about his friend's funny side when the teacher calls his name.