I've been known to do some practical jokes on my kids for April 1st, so yesterday my 11 year old son mentioned to a sibling that he wondered what jokes I'd play. I hadn't yet given it any thought, but I knew then and there I HAD to do something.
Mid-morning today, the genius idea came to me.
My 11 year old got news we were all super happy about last Friday, that he was accepted into the magnet program of our 1st choice public middle school for him to attend next fall! I thought for sure he'd be wait-listed since over 2,000 apply for 125 spots, so we are super thankful he got a spot. We've talked a lot about all that the school has to offer and what classes and schedule my son will likely have next year. Which all led me to the idea to create a fake letter from the school, modeled after the real acceptance letter he got last Friday. In that fake letter I said (with the school name and magnet coordinator changed to protect our privacy):
Congratulations, again, on being selected to participate in our Magnet Program for the 2014-2015 school year. We do hope you will select Westwood Middle School as your school of choice.
We would like to notify you of some changes we will be implementing for next school year. As you likely know, Westwood is a foreign language magnet, but we are also a strong fine arts school. To further develop our fine arts program we are requiring all 6th graders to participate in one fine arts class for the fall and one for the spring semester. Then after sampling a bit of what Westwood has to offer, for the 7th and 8th grade years at Westwood, each student may choose a fine arts class as an elective if they wish. Due to the popularity of some particular fine arts classes, to be fair we are randomly assigning each incoming 6th grade student to a fine arts class in the fall and one in the spring. Your assigned classes are as follows:
Fall 2014-2015: Dance
Spring 2014-2015: Gymnastics
Again, we hope to see you at Westwood in the fall as well as at our New Student night on May 1st.
Sincerely yours,
Sarah Emerson, Magnet Coordinator
I'm sure this is against the law so nobody tell, okay, but I even deviously copied the letterhead logo off our acceptance letter and then copied it onto the fake letter. It really looked real!
I handed it to my son after he got home from school today saying it came today. The look on his face when he read the letter was hysterical (you'd really have to know my son to understand just how much he'd hate dance and gymnastics for a school year)! I couldn't keep a straight face for long and had to fess up to the joke pretty quickly, but he believed it for a minute! He was relieved it was not a real letter and really thought it was a funny joke!
Then, I had the idea to further spread the joy of the joke and show the letter to my husband when he got home from work as if it was a real letter. My son and I were about to bust as my husband totally fell for it and started saying, "They can't do this! Maybe he shouldn't go there!" Then when we were laughing so hard he finally asked, "Is this an April Fool's joke?" He admitted that we got him!
There were some other smaller jokes played on the all the kids -- cranberry juice in their water bottles instead of water, inflatable frogs that jumped out at them from the pantry, fake dog throw up, snakes in the toilet -- don't you wish you lived with me?
My kids spent the rest of the day trying to trick me, but they are not at all in my league, yet. However, I think I'm going to need to watch out on future April Fool's Days!
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