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Our Best April Fools Pranks
We are an April Fools family. Some years we are spur of the moment and some years a lot of effort goes into our devious plans. This year we have been duly warned by our teenager that she has been working on her April Fools ideas for MONTHS. Please, if this message reaches you in time, SEND HELP!
When the kids were small it was easy to go with old standbys like “Hey look there’s a dinosaur in the backyard!” A lot has transpired since then. Over the years the kids have transformed into their own formidable pranksters. April 1st has become a day we love and fear.
The big chocolate poop on the toilet seat was actually so gross we will spare you the pic but the giant bug in the lamp shade was pretty funny.
The best jokes, though, are the ones where you have some sort of buy-in, even if and when you don’t know you have it. I actually did need a pen. I was storming around, shouting, where are all my pens? What have you guys done with my pens? And as you can see, here are my pens.
Over the years there have been hits and misses, but a lot of great pranks involved creative use of colour and messing with the kids’ food. These were some of our favourite, most enduring pranks:
- Putting food colouring in the milk.
- Putting those little colour tablets that come in egg decorating kits in the faucet so a sudden blast of colour comes out of the tap. You can also put them in the toilet tank.
- Mixing gelatin into a bowl of cereal with the spoon in it so the spoon gets stuck into place.
- Putting a bowl of cereal, spoon and all, in the freezer, and setting it out for morning breakfast.
- Putting rubber bugs in their lunch boxes or sandwiches.
- Cutting a bunch of brown letter Es out of construction paper, wrapping them in foil and telling them they are brownies (the kids did not love this one).
- Yelling about the “leek” in the sink.
The best ones though are pranks of opportunity. We still laugh about the time our kid had to research an animal for science class and she chose the polar bear. She made a lovely Arctic diorama with a snow cave, a blue resin pond and a polymer clay bear. When the time came for her presentation she realized it was April Fools day and she did a last minute switcheroo. She hot glue gunned this janky cardboard cave with a rubber glove hanging over the entrance and stuck a weird creature on top. Her teacher was like, “Oh, um, well, ok….I see you made something…” Our kid finally cracked up and let her in on the joke. April Fools!