With the Kids

10 April Fool’s Day Pranks for the Whole Family!

My little boys are shaking in their boots. Come April Fool’s Day, mom is getting some serious revenge.  I literally cannot tell you HOW many times I have drenched my clothes, because they put a rubber band around the kitchen sink sprayer.  Those little terds are constantly scouring the internet for April Fool’s Day pranks to do around the house…I’ve seen ketchup in place of red nail polish, baby powder in place of shampoo, trip wires, yellow food coloring in the toilet, nasty additives in my water bottle, squirt gun blasting (of cold water) while in the shower, fake bugs in beds, cups of water on top of the door, just to name a few!  I’m hoping it’s just a stage. :)

To get them back for all their mischief, I’ve been studying up, asking around, and preparing for an all out war.  Unfortunately, I warned them…and, they’re doing the same.  Don’t say anything, but I’m kinda scared.  I have to keep announcing the rule of our war, “no ruining anybody’s stuff.”  But, they’re 10 and 7 years old, so we’ll see how that goes.

Want in on the battle plan??

I found several great ideas that I’m contemplating…

April Fool's Day Pranks for the Family

10 April Fool’s Day Pranks for the Whole Family!

1.  I’ve always heard to keep your enemies close, so I’m thinking we’ll start off the morning with breakfast, together.  And, for breakfast, I’m talking an ice cream sundae bar.  “Kids, come and get breakfast!”  What?  No eggs, pancakes, cereal?  Nope.  Ice cream, brownies, bananas, bowls of different candies, hot fudge sauce, whip cream, and sooooooo on.  They’ll be utterly confused, wondering if I’ve already waved my white flag.  A perfect state of mind for launching my surprise attacks.

2.  I’m thinking a little food coloring or syrup in the soap dispenser would be nice…

3.  All their clean underwear on the ceiling fan…

4.  A little frosting in their toothpaste.

5.  The kids are never allowed to drink their daddy’s Mountain Dew, until April Fool’s Day, when it’s been switched out for pickle juice.  Yum!

6.  Switch out the bottle of blue Windex (cleaned really well), for blue GatorAid.  Giving my mouth a few sprays, while they help me clean up.

7.  Mouse poop in their beds! (A.K.A. dry rice painted black)  “I told you to stop eating in your bed!  Now, look!  You’ve got mice!”

8.  How about a little treat?  Oreos and milk….or really Oreo’s with toothpaste filling.  Ick!

9.  Maybe I’ll show them the new science experiment I learned.  They’re all about science experiments.  A stick of butter, at room temperature, on a plate, generously covered in salt, produces heat.  Did you know that?  Put your hand over it to feel the heat.  “Ha! Just kidding,” as I slap their hand into the butter.  What a nice mom.

10.  After I wear them out and they’re nice and comfy in their beds…squirt gun attack!  They will rue the day that they ever messed with me.

Oh, and let me tell you…I have the perfect one for my husband!  I figure if I’m going to start a war, might as well go big.  He is so in love with his precious truck, it’s crazy.  So, I’m thinking of wrapping some duck tape around his side view mirror, as if it’s holding it on to the truck.  When he notices, I’ll sheepishly say, “Sorry.  I bumped the side of the garage.  The duck tape fixed it pretty good, but I wasn’t able to get that scratch out of the side.”  Sucka.

Have a fun holiday!

For more April Fool’s Day pranks, check out my other post: April Fool’s Day Pranks, for Parents.

*photo via Maarten van den Heuvel

35 comments

  1. All of these are hilarious! I cant wait to try all of these!!!!!!!!!! HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  2. Let me start by saying my daughter is 5, and this was really her “first” taste of April Fools Day. This morning I made pancakes, I let her help. When it was time to crack the egg into the batter I let her do it. She cracked the egg and nothing came out, when she looked she saw the egg was hard boiled. The look on her face was priceless!! It took her a bit to figure out it was a trick, but then she laughed pretty hard. She went off to play while I cooked the pancakes and then cleaned up everything. When she came to the table she was mortified to see 2 tiny (the size of a thumb nail) pancakes with 3 blueberries a drip of syrup and a tiny piece of ham, all on a tiny plate with a tiny fork. In her tiny cup was orange milk. She actually ran from the kitchen intears screaming that she was STARVING and that wasn’t enough food! Perosonally I laughed my butt off, and then pulled the real breakfast from the oven. She eventually laughed about it. We are planning on making cookies later and mixing a special one for her daddy that is loaded with salt (or something) and serving it with a glass of buttermilk. She is very excited! I love the ideas here, the bed switching one is classic!! And I have to admit, a frog in the toilet…I’d have died! Creative ideas, I love the frozen cereal one, and the jello juice too!! Can’t wait to try some of these out!!!

  3. As a follow up wondering how your day went and how your survived. Wondering what your boys had in store for you.

    1. Well, l’m still alive…that’s good! We had a frog in the toilet, my drink turned into gel, fart spray throughout the house, glued toilet paper…and on, and on. Most importantly, a killer ice cream sundae breakfast, complete with Nerds, M&Ms, Reeses Pieces, Brownies, Fudge Sauce, Bananas, and the likes!

  4. Great ideas. My kids gang up on me too. I have heard of crete papering over their doors so they have to burst out of their doors to get out of them. One year I stuffed the bottoms of their shoes with paper so when they went to put them on they couldn’t get them on and they laughed pretty hard at that. My husband and I sleep with a lot of pillows and my son hid all of our pillows around the house. It took a long time to find all of our pillows. That was pretty funny. I like the jello drinking cups. We are having friends over for dinner tomorrow and I am going to do that for everybody as a joke. It is hard coming up with new stuff so I am frantically searching the web today coming up with stuff. Love the ideas you have.

  5. I am going to make jello in their drinking cups, so when they ask for juice it won’t come out. lol

  6. K I love all these ideas!! ha I am definitely going to be trying some of these out. April fool’s is one crazy holiday but I love it! It helps us break up the everyday, same-old routine, with some silly surprises. :) Yeah you have to be careful with some stuff but I think everyone has enough common sense to know what would be okay for them and their family… Hope everyone has a great one!

  7. Sheesh! April Fools is once a year people! Live a little! She’s going to be making memories with her kids, and I’m sure down the road they will appreciate it, instead of worrying about how much toothpaste they ingested, or if they got butter on their hands….. anyways- Have a great April Fools!!

  8. Sounds like a few mommies are big time worry warts! What if they like Oreo’s filled with toothpaste?….seriously? And the butter one is hilarious! I’d do that any other day, that’s how we play…and it’s fun! We all know our kids and what we can and can’t do with them. No one is out to hurt anyone. And the writer seams pretty bright, I’m sure she knows what she is doing.

  9. I’d agree the Windex one is a bad one. What if they try to copy. “rinse” it out “well”….and then do the same: well, they didn’t rinse it out well and that could be dangerous. Your kids still look (from your website about page) rather young (if it is current). I don’t know if they would all quite understand (not saying they’re not smart-just saying they’re kids and who knows what they may try to do just because you did it).

    The Oreo with toothpaste filling you might want to be careful with too. What if they actually like it (mint flavored oreos…yum right?) and they actually decide to eat the whole thing? Not good.

    The Butter one just seems a tad rude though…I mean, if you did that on any other day would that be funny still?

    The breakfast idea is great though. You could end with cereal for dinner!

    1. Rude? Holy cow, lighten up. It’s April Fool’s Day and you have no idea what I’m in store for. My kids are going to go NUTS on me, they have been plotting endlessly and taunting me, all week. I’m not doing it on any other day, and I’m not telling anyone else to do it on any other day.

      As for the other two pranks, yes…you have to be smart about it. You have to know your kids. I would never do this in front of my youngest kids. I would never let them eat a whole Oreo. I would never not explain what I had done. I would never do anything if I felt there really was a risk. With my two oldest boys, I don’t feel worried. I don’t have to defend myself to you, because I know my kids, and we’re going to have fun.

    2. I agree, lighten up! You should know what is appropriate for your child. Some kids are even more aware than adults on April fool’s day and will be waiting for things to be out of the ordinary. About the Windex, if you tasted any hint of Windex still in a bottle would you keep squirting it in your mouth? I doubt any kid would. As far as the Oreo cookies go, I worked for a dental office for eight years and swallowing some toothpaste is not going to hurt you. Also, I seriously don’t think a kid is going to sit there and continually coat their Oreo’s with toothpaste, especially if it’s mint. The Oreo’s creamy center full of sugar tastes much better. Some pranks that work for some won’t work for others, but don’t assume you know how someone’s kids are. Hope everyone has a fun April Fools?

  10. I second NOT doing the windex bottle prank. even well rinsed and washed out, you take the risk of ingesting windex residue left in the spray nozzle and straw that goes into the bottle.

  11. Please, please, don’t do the Windex one. Kids may seem savvy, but they should never think it’s a good idea to mess around with cleaning products. We had a science teacher in HIGH SCHOOL who thought it’d be funny to pretend to drink out of a beaker. There were kids, even at that late age, who copied him and wound up in the nurse’s office.

    I love the food coloring ideas. :)

    1. Ya, I could see how that would be bad if I didn’t tell them what it really was, and what I did. I should have pointed that out in the post. But, I would tell them, for sure, right after I did it. Thanks for pointing that out.

  12. You could put food coloring crystals in their toothpaste so that when they brush their teeth it dyes their mouth.

  13. I did this to my son for April Fool’s Day… Every morning he has cereal for breakfast, so I put the cereal and milk in a bowl overnight in the freezer. When he woke up in the morning for breakfast, I gave him frozen cereal and he couldn’t eat it and got so upset!

  14. I like your style! My husband and I had to call a truce because things got so bad between us on April 1. Now we team up against the kids. I sewed my husbands underwear together so it was one long string of tighty whiteys. Soo funny. This one still makes me laugh: my husband was job searching one year. I told him Mr. Lyon called and wanted him to talk to him about a job. I gave him the number. When he called the number the person on the other line had a good chuckle when she said, “I don’t think he can come to the phone.” I had given him the number to the zoo. For the kids, I have added tons of salt to oreo filling (for the entire class), put plastic wrap inside the caps of all the shampoos and conditioners, turned the milk green (caution no one wanted to drink it after that), put packing tape across the doors so they walked into it, switched kids during the night so they woke up in the wrong beds, served them mashed potato cupcakes, shamburgers (from Familyfun.com- it has tons of printables and good ideas). I made fake baked potatoes (made with knee highs and polyfoam) and last year I gave them donut tree seeds (cheerios). My husband and I have even made a fake man reading a newspaper and had him sit at the kitchen table . So fun!

  15. I love your idea of taping the side mirror with duct tape but I would watch out for the residue that it leaves behind. It might really ruin the mirror with the adhesive that it might leave behind.

    I only say that because I know that if I did that to my husbands car it would be funny until I peeled it off and had to clean up what was left. My man would freak out!

    Otherwise I loved these ideas for my own kids.
    Emily

    1. Ya, the residue could be a pain. I have a friend that used duck tape, and it was fine. But, I think painters tape would be even better! It comes off nicely and looks really similar to duck tape, from a distance.

      1. wrap it in plastic wrap first and then there is zero sticky stuff on the truck itself! :)

        1. I was definately thinking the plastic wrap too. My first concern was also the sticky residue and how to fix it. Of course, I NEVER drive our truck (can’t see over the dash), so he’d know something was up. I’m sure I could come up with a different item to “break” though…

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