Today's Classroom Activities :

Humor, Laughter, Smiles, and Poetry

Classroom Chuckles
Language Make a smiley face on an empty plastic container. As the children find jokes or humorous parts in stories, provide slips of paper on which to copy them. Put the slips in the smiley can. When you have to wait for a few minutes, call on students to select and read a chuckle. Was it funny? What made it funny?(Get some joke books from the library to have around the room.)

A Laugh and a Half: Students Make Funny-Poem Mobiles
Students find their favorite funny poems—and write their own—to hang from smile-mobiles. Student work sheet provided.

Funny Photos
Language Have everyone (including the teacher!) bring in pictures of family members or animals doing funny things. Post the pictures on large bulletin board paper. Allow various children to write a short caption under each photo. What is it that makes them funny? Can the action be explained in one sentence?

Word Beads: Writing Funny Poetry
Students will listen to selected poems written by Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky, then they will assemble their "Word Beads" into poetic phrases and/or sentences.

What's So Funny?
Language In celebration of Humor Month, have students select and share their favorite funny stories. Ask the children why we say we've hit our "funny bone" when we bang our elbows. (This nickname derives from the humerus, the long bone that runs from the elbow to the shoulder.) Have students research and present the various forms of humor.

Lucille Ball: What's So Funny?
Students will learn about images of women in Hollywood cinema, in the 40s, 50s, and today. Then they will participate in a warm-up and comedy improv exercise.

Clerihew
Students will write a clerihew poem, create and understand a rhyming pattern, and finally, identify and use interesting adjectives in writing.

Funny Face
Students will crack a smile when creating these Funny Faces! Try Pablo Picasso's Cubist style of painting—have them jumble up the eyes, nose, and mouth.