April Fools' Day 

I love teaching. I love laughing. I love looking for ways to have fun in the classroom. When I saw we were going to be in school on April 1st, I knew I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to play some fun jokes on my students.
 
Like any good teacher, I started researching and planning. I even collaborated with other teachers. What's more fun than doing one April Fools' Day joke? Doing three of them! Of course, all the jokes would have an academic connection. I was so excited to carry out my plans and fill our classroom with laughter. Here are the 3 jokes I played on my students this year (I found all of these ideas online):

1. Lirpa Loof  (Science/Literacy connection) – After reviewing migration and hibernation, I told the students that there is very rare bird that migrates to our area at the beginning of April. Then, I passed out this handout from another teaching blog. We read, discussed, and completed the activity together. 

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I told my students we were going to go outside to see if we could find a Lirpa Loof. I reminded them that the birds respond best if we chant/sing its name repeatedly while waving carrots in the air. I then passed out baby carrots to everyone, and we went to the field behind our school. There’s nothing like seeing a group of elementary students running around, waving carrots, while chanting, “Lirpa Loof, Lirpa Loof." Some students claimed they even saw the Lirpa Loof's nest! After about 5 minutes, I let them in on the joke – That “Lirpa Loof” is really “April Fool” spelled backwards. The look on their faces was priceless. Prank #1 was a success!

2. Spring Word Search (Literacy connection) – This is a classic April Fools' Day joke – give the students a word search where none of the words are in the puzzle. It works better if you have the students put up "privacy folders/dividers" while trying to complete the word search. This way, they don't realize that no one else is finding any words either. Prank #2 was a success! 

3. “iPad / Eye Pad”  (Technology/Literacy Connection) – Earlier in the week, I set a gift bag on my desk, but didn’t say anything about it. I thought this joke would be more believable if the gift bag was seen in our room prior to April Fools' Day. It’s all about building anticipation! 

A day or two later, I mentioned that I bought the class a gift, and they would find out what it was on Friday. My students started wondering what was in the bag…was it chocolate? Books? I told them they would find out on April 1st.
 
Today we opened the bag (they had been asking about it all throughout the day). They were so excited to see an “iPad!” We already have 1 iPad which we use in class, so this would be a 2nd one. Their excitement soon changed to shock (and then laughter) when they opened the box and found an “Eye Pad.”  We then quickly reviewed the importance of understanding homophones (because then the joke was funny and educational). Prank #3 was also a success!

Today, in the midst of our regular assignments and tests, we had some fun. We learned a lot, but we also laughed a lot. Time to start planning for the next April Fools' Day....