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Funny Games to Play at School

Everyone needs a good laugh from time to time--even schoolchildren. Between class time, tests and homework, there is plenty going on during the school year to leave children feeling fear or dread. Yet every so often a child will find himself playing a game at school that leaves him and his classmates in stitches. Good teachers recognize the need for a little humor, and are happy to let students take part in a funny game every so often.

Fill-in-the-Blank Stories
- This exercise allows students to write hilarious stories while learning some grammar lessons at the same time. A fill-in-the-blank story contains spaces where key words are missing. A teacher with a book of fill-in-the-blank stories can enlist the help of her class to fill in the blanks. Some sentences require nouns, others adjectives or verbs. Students are permitted to use whatever word they choose, as long as it fits the category requested by the teacher. For example, the word "bear" could be used to fill in the sentence: "John went to the cupboard to fetch himself a (bear)." Once the words are filled in, the teacher reads the story back to the class, and in most cases, laughter quickly follows.
Group Stories
- This activity promotes good grammar and sentence structure, with the potential to be hilarious to both students and teacher. The first student in each row takes a blank sheet of lined paper and is given three minutes to write the beginning of a story. After the three minutes are up, the paper is passed back to the second student in each row, who is given three minutes to continue the story. The exercise continues until each student has had an opportunity to write something. When the stories are done, the teacher reads them aloud to the class. The resulting tales may not make much sense, but they&'re sure to generate laughs from students who had a hand in crafting them.
Broken Telephone
- This is a popular game for all ages. The game begins with all participants sitting in a straight line. The teacher begins by whispering a sentence in the ear of the student to his right. He may say, for example, "Tom&'s dog has a furry tail." The first student relays the message in a whisper to the classmate sitting directly to her right, and that student passes along the message to the classmate on his right. The game continues until the final student is entrusted with the message, which she repeats aloud for all to hear. Because of the nature of the game, the sentence will often come out sounding different from the way it did at the outset. For example, the student may say "Ron&'s frog ate a rusty nail." The mirth lies in how the message is changed as it is passed down the line.

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