JokesJokes for kids: how to choose them and tell them
Children love jokes long before they understand them. A four-year-old laughs because you are laughing. A seven-year-old laughs because a snail bought a scooter. A ten-year-old laughs because they saw the trick in the words before you finished. Choosing the right joke for the right age is most of the work.
What works at each age
- Four to six years. Silly pictures in the head: an ant with an umbrella, a cow with no appointments. The child does not need a clever twist, only something that could never happen. Use animal sounds, funny voices and your face. Keep it to two lines.
- Six to eight years. Question-and-answer jokes. At this age children discover that a joke has a shape: a question, a wait, a surprise. They will want to ask you the same joke back at once. Let them.
- Eight to ten years. Jokes with a reason inside them: the owl tops night school because it is the only student awake. The child enjoys working out why. School jokes begin to work now, because school is their office.
- Ten and above. Wordplay and gentle jokes about daily life: homework that "needed rest", the pencil box with six pens. They also start to enjoy telling a joke better than their friends do.
How to tell a joke to a child
- Get their eyes first. Say, "I have a question for you." A joke told to a child who is looking at a screen is wasted.
- Ask, then wait. Count to five in your head. Welcome every guess. A wild wrong answer is a joke the child has just made; laugh at it.
- Give the answer slowly. Children need a moment to build the picture. Say the last words clearly.
- Laugh with them. Your laugh tells a small child that it is safe to find this funny.
- Hand over the stage. "Now you tell me one." Their joke may make no sense at all. It is still the best one of the evening.
What to leave out
Children repeat everything, at school, to the teacher, to the neighbour. So a joke for a child must be one you are happy to hear repeated anywhere. Leave out jokes that laugh at how somebody looks, speaks, walks or studies; a child cannot yet tell teasing from hurting, and will try the joke on a classmate. Leave out anything frightening at bedtime. And never laugh at a child who did not understand a joke. Explain it once, kindly, or move to the next.
Help children make their own
A simple recipe works from about age six. Pick an animal. Ask what it is known for: a tortoise is slow, a parrot repeats, a crow is noisy. Now put it somewhere it does not belong: a school, a bank, a bus. "Why did the tortoise leave for school on Sunday? To reach by Monday." The child has just written a joke, and learned that humour comes from noticing things.
This is good for more than fun. Telling a joke teaches a child to remember a sequence, to speak clearly, to wait for a turn and to watch how listeners feel. A shy child who can tell one good joke has a way into any group.
Where to start on this site
Begin with animal jokes for kids or, in Hindi, बच्चों के चुटकुले. For children of eight and above, add the school jokes. Every joke on these pages is clean and was written for this site, so you can hand the phone over without reading ahead.