April Fool's Day Crafts

These are our April Fool's Day Crafts

Clown Glyph

Materials Needed:

• Paper plates/circles
• Scissors
• Crayons

(1) If you played a practical joke on someone this morning before anyone tricked you, draw a happy mouth on your clown. If someone played a practical joke on you before you tricked anyone else, draw a sad mouth on your clown.
(2) If you like April Fool's Day, draw an red nose on your clown. If you don't like April Fool's Day, draw a orange nose on your clown.
(3) If someone in your family played a trick on you, draw freckles on your clown's cheeks. If no one in your family played a trick on you, draw a big circle on each of your clown's cheeks.
(4) If you are a girl, draw blue eyes on your clown. If you are a boy, draw green eyes on your clown.
 (5) If you are a girl, draw colour your clown’s hair pink. If you are a boy, colour your clown’s hair yellow.

April Fools' Day Origins a Mystery

The origins of April Fools' Day are shrouded in mystery, experts say.

The most popular theory is that France changed its calendar in the 1500s so that the New Year would begin in January to match the Roman calendar instead of beginning at the start of spring, in late March or early April.

However word of the change traveled slowly, and many people in rural areas continued to celebrate the New Year in the spring. These country dwellers became known as "April fools," the story goes.

Boese, who has studied the holiday's origin, disagrees with that interpretation.

"[The French] theory is completely wrong, because the day that the French celebrated the beginning of the year legally was Easter day, so it never really was associated with April first," he said.

"Traditionally it was only a legal start to the year—people in France did actually celebrate [the New Year] on January first for as long as anybody could remember."

Boese believes instead that April Fools' Day simply grew out of age-old European spring festivals of renewal, in which pranks and camouflaging one's identity are common.

April Fools' Day: The Joke's On Us

Joseph Boskin, professor emeritus of American humor at Boston University, has offered his own interpretation of the holiday's roots—as a prank.

In 1983, Boskin told an Associated Press reporter that the idea came from Roman jesters during the time of Constantine I in the third and fourth centuries A.D.

As the story goes, jesters successfully petitioned the ruler to allow one of their elected members to be king for a day.

So, on April first, Constantine handed over the reins of the Roman Empire for one day to King Kugel, his jester. Kugel decreed that the day forever would be a day of absurdity.

Kugel, incidentally, is an Eastern European dish that one of Boskin's friends had been craving.

The news agency was less than thrilled about the gambit, Boskin said. "I thought I should have been complimented for a quacky, quirky story that was fitted to the occasion."

Humor and pranksters can offer society some much-needed perspective, he added.

"Good humorists are basically secular shamans—they both heckle society on one hand and heal it on the other."

Boese of the Museum of Hoaxes also points out the day is an outlet for social inequalities to be openly confronted. For example, street urchins used to play April Fools' Day tricks on London gentlemen in the 1800s.

For more information visit:  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/03/080328-april-fools/