I realized this April Fools Day that my kids are especially bad at telling jokes. For one thing, Nathan’s timing is completely off. And Lucie doesn’t understand how to do a simple “knock- knock” joke to save her life. When she makes one up, they make no sense.

As a mother, this is disconcerting since the only reason I put up with my kids and their father is that they make me laugh. Aside from sending them to a comedy camp for the humor challenged, I thought a little humor therapy was in order. Maybe viewing Caddyshack would help, as would getting a few jokes books. Heck, Lucie could listen to Nathan reading the jokes out of the book and maybe they’d learn through osmosis.

Here are some of the joke books I found at the library:

• Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
• School Jokes
• Stinky Riddles
• The World’s Greatest Knock-Knock Jokes for Kids
• Knock, Knock

And here are a couple we already had at home:

• The Everything Kids’ Joke Book: Side-Splitting, Rib-Tickling Fun
• The Usborne Book Of Really Awful Jokes

The easiest jokes for young children are knock knock jokes and puns. Here’s a sample from Yummy Riddles:

What do you call a dinner that talks back to you?
Rude food

What did one pork chop say to the other?
Nice to meat you.

Knock, knock.
Who’s there?
Bacon.
Bacon who?
Bacon my mother a birthday cake!

This is not Chris Rock by any means, but it’s a start.

For joke food, you can check out the Denver Post’s You’ve got to be joking, right? April Fool’s Day pranks range from classic, crude to highbrow, scientific for some ideas. I didn’t care for the Deceptive Cake that used frosting to coat an unwrapped roll of toilet tissue – it’s a waste of paper products and frosting!

However, I loved their Nervous Eggs idea. You use an indelible-ink pen to draw terrified expressions on all the eggs in the carton. It would be funny to open up the carton and see all these terrified eggs looking back at you.

Then there’s Jell-o, the butt of many a joke. While you can buy all sorts of jiggler and Jell-o molds from Kraft, the most fun is making jigglers in a pan and using cookie cutters to cut out letters and shapes.

Jell-o Jigglers

Ingredients:

1. 2-1/2 cups boiling water (Do not add cold water.)
2. 2 packages (8-serving size each) JELL-O Brand Gelatin, any flavor

Directions:

1. Stir boiling water into dry gelatin mix in large bowl at least 3 minutes until completely dissolved. Pour into 13×9-inch pan.
2. Refrigerate at least 3 hours or until firm.
3. Dip bottom of pan in warm water 15 seconds. Cut into 24 decorative shapes using 2-inch cookie cutters, being careful to cut all the way through gelatin to bottom of pan. Lift JIGGLERS® from pan. Reserve scraps for snacking. Store in tightly covered container in refrigerator.

Other jiggler recipes:

• Rainbow jigglers using pudding mix and yogurt
• For the grownups, here are some recipes for Jell-o Shots from Mrs. Megabyte. If you don’t start giggling after having a few of these, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

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