When his teacher calls him, he glances over his shoulder with an inviting smile and runs away. She quickly follows and scoops him up, asking, "Are you a runaway bunny? Louis is testing limits within a playful interaction. By playing along with his joke, the teacher avoids a power struggle. Toddlers enjoy sharing jokes and imitating one another. If a toddler plops down on his bottom on purpose, for instance, other toddlers might giggle as they imitate him and form a falling down conga line.
Along with their spirit of camaraderie, this group also finds falling down funny because it is something they have recently mastered. What fun and a big relief to now play with the act of falling down. The symbolic play and emerging language of older toddlers allow them to make lots of silly jokes. A 2-year-old might put his foot into the sleeve of his jacket saying, "Look!
My shoe! Therefore, the level of the toddler's cognitive and language development determines what he finds funny. Laughing, 3-year-old Adam says to his teacher, who is sitting on a couch with a lion puppet on her right hand, "Look. You have a lion hand! Becoming increasingly more sociable, 3-year-olds enjoy sharing their sense of humor with friendly adults.
Like Adam with his teacher, they love to laugh at things they consider implausible or incredible. Threes adore it when an adult playfully says something absurd to them, like "Why are you wearing that bird on your head? Young 3s also love to laugh at themselves when, accidentally, they do something ridiculous, such as putting their jackets on upside down or painting their fingers red along with the paper they're working on.
They usually follow these funny noises with big belly laughs. With their buddies, they relish trying out goofy things they consider hilarious, such as throwing all their stuffed animals up in the air or wildly splashing in the water tub with plastic spoons.
Or they may run around and try to crash into each other, then fall down in a big, giggling heap. Preschoolers enjoy making up unbelievable nonsense stories. For example, Vanessa relates, "My dog flew up into the sky and jumped around on pepperoni pizza pies. As they become more verbal, experimenting with the sounds of words will send some preschoolers into waves of laughter. And if a teacher happens to repeat Samantha's silly rhyming "pigety, wigety" back to her, she is just delighted.
Preschoolers are fascinated by intentionally misnaming things and playing with words. Four-year-old Samuel cracks up when he orders a "hamburgler" with ketchup! And his pal Jeremy thinks it's a great joke when he keeps calling Samuel by the wrong name. Humor also allows fours to laugh off some genuine fears they may have about such things as bleeding or death.
For instance, on a very hot day in Texas, my grandson, Owen, said, "I have a new joke for you. There's a snowman outside the window. Owen laughs and says, "It died! Abby, age 4, laughs when her older sister asks, "What's a purple gorilla called? A grape ape. However, the logic behind many jokes and also the understanding of a play on words may still be beyond them. Kindergarten children love "Knock, Knock" jokes. Because they follow a predictable pattern they can easily replicate with any words they like.
In fact, the words don't even have to make sense, as in the case of the joke above. Five- and 6-year-old children often think it is even funnier if they don't!
For example, they might look around the room, see an object, and use it in the joke. Table who? Table on the floor! Interestingly, a 5- or 6-year-old's use of humor tells you a great deal about his cognitive and linguistic abilities.
The ability to play "knock, knock" jokes, for example, shows a child is learning the rules of conversation and is able to follow and use a sequential linguistic pattern.
At this stage, children's vocabularies have developed to the level where they can play with replacing words in a sentence or pattern to see and hear!
Calling something by the wrong name is a favorite "funny" at this stage and will get the entire class giggling. At this stage, children pick up the pattern of riddles and will run with them in their own way. A simple riddle such as "What did the cat say to the dog?
Making sense is not what is most important to 5- and 6-year-olds. They love the fun of the silly statements, the pattern, and most important, the opportunity to laugh at their own jokes as soon as they tell them! Since laughter is often contagious, when we hear others laughing, we tend to start laughing too. And then everyone involved gets to reap the benefits of laughter. Kids can develop a sense of humour at a very young age.
But what kids find funny will differ at each stage of their development. Try some of these activities to help make your kids laugh depending on their age group. And they are very responsive to physical stimuli, like tickling and blowing raspberries on their bellies. They also like rhymes and nonsense words, along with trying to make their parents laugh. Once kids start school, slapstick humour, wordplay, and exaggeration become funnier.
At this stage, kids will also start to learn the pleasure of telling jokes. As kids get older, they have a better understanding of words and start using puns, riddles, and other types of wordplay.
Making kids laugh is one of the top joys of parenting. And if you can get the whole family involved, it makes for many memorable moments filled with laughter, and the gratifying feeling of laughing with others. Persistent joke-telling is a bore. The trick is to hold the jokes you know for the moment when they will work. I collect joke books and cartoon books, and have always given them to my children. Hearing children reading jokes to each other is a treat. And this is all quite apart from the whole barrage of spin, deceit, fakery and the overblown nonsense of advertising, self-publicity and political chicanery.
It is our duty as adults to spend time redressing this power balance by puncturing all of it — with wordplay, inversions, bad puns, altered names and mashups. So They Call You Pisher! Michael Rosen: the trick to making children laugh. Remember what made you laugh as a child If you want to discover how to make children laugh — and I truly believe all adults should, because children need laughter — the best place to start is with your own childhood.
My inspiration: Michael Rosen on Molesworth and his big brother. Read more.
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