Joshua and I had an interesting conversation in the minivan today on the way home from school. Joshua was trying to figure out what the point of April Fools Day is.
Joshua tells me it's a day to be silly. He was trying to explain some tricks he heard bigger kids talking about today at school. I had a hard time following his story, but it didn't sound like a very nice trick. And the end result was another child crying in aftercare today.
We decided that April Fools silliness is only fun if:
- it doesn't hurt anyone. Not just their outsides, but their feelings, too. If an April Fools day prank will embarass someone, make them sad, angry or scared, then it hurts their feelings and that's not having fun.
and
- it can be done honestly. Just because we are having a silly day, does not mean we can stop being honest. There are still consequences for not being truthful.
Dr. Seuss's book Green Eggs and Ham is a good example of a silly prank trying to get Sam to eat colored eggs and ham. At least until Joshua reminded me that Sam starts to get frustrated with not wanting to eat the green eggs and ham. Well, there went my one good example. Maybe next year we can have some good clean fun with April Fools Day - or at least learn about it's origin in our homeschool curriculum.
2 comments:
Do you know what curriculum you will be using? Sage and I did a "trial run" yesterday with our p 4/5 sonlight curriculum and she LOVED it! I am so excited to get started in the fall :)
I couldn't agree more. We didn't celebrate it in any way yesterday, but I plan on teaching my kids that same thing. Thanks for mentioning it!
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