April Fools Day in the Classroom

It's the first day back from Spring Break up here and it also just so happens to be April Fool's Day as well.  Luckily for my I'm working today and I've been in the school/classroom that I'm in today a bunch so I know the kids really well.  And for these reasons I feel 100% okay about playing a couple of April Fool's Day jokes on them.

I did a little bit of research and the first thing I came up with was to get those tootsie pop suckers and cut off the sucker part of it.  Then, on the top of the stick put a piece of broccoli and re wrap that the sucker in it's wrapper.  It would have been especially good because the week before Spring Break they had a Read and Feed day and they all complained about the smell the broccoli gave off.  But alas, I only had frozen broccoli which likely would have turned into a goopy mess and I wasn't interested in buying more just to trick some students.  Plus, I would have to buy them extra tootsie pops and eventually give them an actual one.

So I mentioned how I had bought a bunch of tootsie rolls in the states.  I actually love these candies (dare I say that they are one of my favourite candies?)  and you can only get them here around Halloween time and only at the Dollar Store (so they are in small bags).  But not in the USA... there you just waltz into target and pick up a 1lb bag of them like it's nothing.  My plan with these is to unwrap the candies and use the wrapper to wrap up a small carrot instead.  They'll be so pumped that their substitute teacher brought them candy (and I bet a lot of them will still enjoy the carrot too).  I will bring extra candies for later in the day for them though... I do have a few I could spare after all.

Making them was super easy...

Step 1: 
Cut up carrots into smaller chunks (you'll likely have to trim them a little to make them a better shape and size to fit into the wrapper later.

Carrot pieces for an April Fool's day prank

Step 2:

Place the now smaller carrot piece into the wrapper and wrap it up.  Be careful no to rip the packaging while tightening the ends... it does happen!

Wrap the carrot in the packaging

Step 3:

Voila!  Can you tell the difference?

Carrots are on the left and Tootsie Rolls are on the right!

Step 4:

Enjoy the leftover now unwrapped pieces!

unwrapped tootsie rolls

Step 5:

Don't mix up your carrots with the actual candy!

Carrot Tootsie Rolls

I put my carrot Tootsie Rolls in a small back to put in the fridge at work but I also brought them some actual candy for the end of the day which I put in a larger bag.

I was telling my husband about my plans and asking him for advice on what I could do so he said I should give them a test but make the questions (and answers non sensical) 

so for example:

The Empire State Building is 102 floors high and was built in the year 1930

a) March 17th

b)  April 1st

c)  May 4th

d)  June 27th

The "correct" answer would be March 17th as that's the date it was finished but they don't know that's what the question is asking.  All the "answers" to the 6 questions are dates and one of the answers is always April 1st... we'll see if they catch on.

My plan is to give the "test" in the morning when I only have the middle years students and the candy I'll do right before pm recess with the elementary and middle years students.  My hope is that they won't be expecting a 2nd April Fools joke after the first one.

Some things that I didn't want to do for my joke:

Tricking students into eating something gross.  So like making a cake pop with a piece of broccoli in the middle... I wanted them to know what the item was as soon as they unwrapped it this way if they don't like carrots they aren't being tricked into eating it as they should know it's a carrot right away.

Something that would require a lot of set up time and they wouldn't care much about.  Turning the room all backwards for example would likely take at least an hour and it's not even my space to turn everything around in anyways.

Did you play any jokes on your students today?

What did you do?