Pranks for Parents on April Fool’s Day!

April Fool’s Day is fast approaching and it’s time for all of us moms to polish up our pranking skills and get our A-game ready! If your kids are old enough to appreciate the humor of a few harmless pranks, they will love the extra laughter you add to their day. Coming up with ideas can be a bit daunting though. A quick search of the seemingly endless interwebs for April Fool’s Day Pranks for parents brings back a mere 808,000 hits.

Yikes! Where to start? While combing through the results I quickly realized I needed to establish some criteria to help weed out at least half a million of those ideas.

Pranking DON’Ts

  1. I’m aiming for laughter, NOT tears and therapy bills. So anything involving blood and gore got the axe, so to speak.
  2. I am not interested in blowing up 5 zillion balloons, no matter how cool it looks in the pictures to fill your house with them. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
  3. I don’t have a fortune to spend, so I’ll need to work mainly with what I have around the house.
  4. I don’t want to be a fun-killer, but if it’s going to make an outrageous mess that takes hours to clean up, I’m out. Covering every surface in your child’s room with hundreds of paper cups filled with colored water borders on crazy.
  5. This probably goes without saying, but I don’t want the prank to land us in the ER, so I won’t be coating the bathtub in Vaseline or partaking in any other such dangerous shenanigans.

Pranking DOs

Now that we’ve culled out the duds, here is a collection of winning picks.  From faux food fun to the always appreciated potty humor, these pranks will get a laugh out of your kids without breaking the bank – or any bones!

@ChocolateCakeMoments.com
@ChocolateCakeMoments.com

Start the day off right with a few surprises to trick your sleepyheads and prepare them for a day of silly fun. If their first stop out of bed is the bathroom, they’ll need to get in line! Create a traffic jam of stuffed animals all waiting for the loo. Pro tip: clean the toilet seat first so your wee ones aren’t cuddling up to E. coli next time they snuggle their favorite lovey. Have your kids outgrown teddy bears? Give your gamer a challenge by leveling up the toilet to Expert Mode.

 

@Coffeebreakwithlizandkate.com
@Coffeebreakwithlizandkate.com

Next stop: breakfast! Prepare goofy foods the night before by freezing their cereal & milk, and making cups of gelatin that look like juice.  They’ll be momentarily stumped as they try to scoop & sip!

 

@Mommysavers.com
@Mommysavers.com

April Fool’s Day falls during the school week this year, which gives us a chance to prank from afar! Opportunities abound for lunch box mayhem. There is always the old gummy worm in an apple trick, and I just love these google eyes for the little ones.

 

@robertasrandom.blogspot.com
@robertasrandom.blogspot.com

One of my favorite Pinterest finds this year is to swap out Cheetos for baby carrots and reseal the bag with double stick tape or glue. That one is sure to earn you a good groan!

 

@spoonful.com
@spoonful.com

Another great printable I found is for this seed packet. The gardener in me loves the idea of getting the kids excited about some spring planting with these doughnut seeds!

See Also
easter basket full of eggs

 

@spoonful.com
@spoonful.com

This one might be a stretch, but if your child is young enough and you have a good poker face, you might be able to pull it off. Especially those of us with ties to the space industry! I’m going to give it a try… and I think I have a shot at it because I have to admit that I successfully convinced my two red heads that they are leprechauns.

A must-have for April Fool's Day recipes!
A must-have for April Fool’s Day recipes!

There are tons of options out there for food pranks. There is even an entire cookbook devoted to such silliness at the supper table. Put your Amazon Prime account to good use and order this book now so you can make a memorable dinner this April Fool’s Day!

What is your favorite April Fool’s Day memory?  Are you a professional prankster? Or have you been on the receiving end of a great prank?  Comment here and share your story, we love a good laugh! And be sure to visit our April Fool’s Pinterest board for even MORE great ideas that we couldn’t fit into just one post.

This article was originally published in 2014 and has been updated. 

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