I get people to use humor at the wrong time, the wrong place or with the wrong person.
Fans of the TV show "The Office" know the main character, Michael Scott, to be the ultimate in Wasfunnyonce-ness. Witness one of his less offensive moments (well, the least offensive one I could find!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=4pwYjcaBqP0
Another Wasfunnyonce characteristic is telling the same joke over and over and over again (For Office fans: "That's what she said").
I actually come from a long line of un-funny clowns. My parents had maybe 4 jokes that they told when I was growing up. And they weren't really good jokes. In fact, they were unbearably corny. But, man, those two cracked up every time they told them! And they told them over and over and over. Why? Because my parents lived to torment their children (remind me to tell you the story of my father, a pair of sequined bell-bottoms, a fog machine, and my 7th grade dance). When they told one of those jokes, at least one of their 3 children would cringe. "Daa-aad! You tell that joke all the time! It's not funny!!!!" Even better: telling the jokes in front of our friends. Ugh, how embarrassing.
Now that I am older and wiser, I have great respect for my mother and father and their painfully unfunny jokes. Now I have my own children to torment, and a willing accomplice in my husband (who is the youngest of 6 children, so he is a true master of immature humor). My husband and I, however, have only one joke. The more we tell it, the funnier it becomes... to us.
Here it is:
(To be told in the car as you drive past a cemetery)
" You know what I hear about that place? People are just dying to get in!"
On one particularly long family vacation we told it so many times (8 cemeteries in under 3 hours!) that it nearly brought my son to tears. "Am I the only mature person in this car?" he asked. We were silent for several minutes, and then, believe it or not, we passed another graveyard.
Husband: "You know what I hear about that place?"
Son: "Daddy, stop it! I know! People are just dying to get in!"
Husband: "Nope. I hear it's got soul."
Comedy gold.
Have no fear, parents, I only torture my own flesh and blood like that.
I do, however, LOVE corny jokes.
So this week we invited Wasfunnyonce to join us as we played around with some silly Halloween riddles. Before we began, we discussed what a riddle is. I found this definition in the article linked below:
"A riddle is a question that turns into a joke. It starts with a puzzling question and ends with an answer that surprises you and usually makes you laugh. The answer to the riddle is called the punch line. The question and answer make a riddle when the same words have two different meanings."
Some common elements found in riddles:
Answers that rhyme
Puns
Idiomatic expressions ("You are driving me batty!")
Homophones: two or more words that share the same pronunciation but have different meanings. They may or may not be spelled on the same way.
Examples: write and right, desert (to abandon) and desert (a thing deserved)
Homographs: share the same spelling. They may or may not have the same pronunciation.
Examples: present (a gift) and present (to introduce)
These are all such important pieces of spoken language and comprehension, not to mention the social benefit of being able to tell and understand jokes.
I was curious to see if the kids could match riddle questions to the punchlines, so I began by reading one question, and giving them several punchlines to chose from. For example:
Why did the vampire go to art school?
a. He was thirsty
b. He was dead and lived in a coffin
c. He wanted to draw blood.
They got a big kick (Idiomatic expression alert) out of this activity, and I caught most of them reading and rereading the riddles after I posted them outside of the room. Hopefully you heard a few at home.
The next day I presented them with some new riddles. This time, I left it up to them to provide the punch lines. This is a tough skill, even for our clever kids, and I am curious to see how their riddles progress as we continue to play around with language.
Here are some of the responses:
"What did one ghost say to the other?"
"Boo!"
"You're so dead...I like you!"
"Hey, Ghost. What's up?"
"I can see through you."
Real punchline: "I don't believe in humans."
"Why did the zombie go to the doctor?"
"Because he had a cold."
"Because he's been awake for 500 years."
"Because he had a Z-ver!"
Real punchline: Because he was dead on his feet!
For more information on why riddles and jokes are so important for reading comprehension and language development (and to learn to throw around the phrase "Metalinguistic Awareness" like a pro), here's an interesting article:
http://www.readingrockets.org/article/28315/
I'm sure you can tell by our spooooky riddles that we are full tilt Halloween around here. We even came up with our class name (finally!): The Haunted Class
To kick off the month of October we wrote some eerie acrostic poems. An acrostic poem uses the letters in a word to begin each line of the poem. All lines of the poem relate to or describe the main topic word.
Here is the one we did as a group on Monday:
And here is what some of the students did on Tuesday:
On Thursday we were inspired by this read-aloud book:
So we wrote our own menu for an old witch (gluten and dairy free, natch). If you don't know the original tune for the classic "I Know an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly", ask your child to sing it for you. Here's the Haunted Class' version:
I know an old witch
who swallowed a spider
I don’t know how it got inside her
We’d better hide her!
I know an old witch who swallowed a Frankenstein
Gobbled it down with out a whine,
She swallowed the Frankenstein
to eat the spider,
I don’t know how it got inside her
We’d better hide her!
I know an old witch who swallowed a demon,
Without
any meaning she swallowed a demon!
She swallowed the demon to
kill the Frankenstein,
She swallowed the Frankenstein
to eat the spider,
I don’t know how it got inside her
We’d better hide her!
I know an old witch who swallowed a mummy,
Right into her tummy,
she swallowed that mummy!
She swallowed the mummy
to get the demon,
She swallowed the demon
to kill the Frankenstein,
She swallowed the Frankenstein
to eat the spider,
I don’t know how it got inside her
We’d better hide her!
I know an old witch who swallowed a snake,
Like a piece of cake she swallowed that snake!
She swallowed the snake
to strangle the mummy,
She swallowed the mummy
to get the demon,
She swallowed the demon
to kill the Frankenstein,
She swallowed the Frankenstein
to eat the spider,
I don’t know how it got inside her
We’d better hide her!
I know an old witch who swallowed a pumpkin,
Her belly was thumpin’ when she swallowed that pumpkin!
She swallowed the pumpkin
to bite the snake,
She swallowed the snake
to strangle the mummy,
She swallowed the mummy
to get the demon,
She swallowed the demon
to kill the Frankenstein,
She swallowed the Frankenstein
to eat the spider,
I don’t know how it got inside her
We’d better hide her!
I
know an old witch who swallowed a bomb.....
KABOOM!!!!!!!!
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