Best Jokes for Kids

I started a mental collection of jokes to tell my kids after 62 sessions of “Knock Knock” “Who’s there?” “Poo Poo Head!” threatened to implode my head. For the uneducated, let me explain: Poo Poo Head is not a funny Knock Knock joke. At least not after the 30th time.

Poo Poo Head can be a funny joke, just not a punchline. Once a friend gave my husband a magazine subscription for Christmas and had it mailed to ‘Mr. Logan Popohed’. For months not only did the magazine come to the Popohed home, several catalogs and special credit card offers were also delivered. This is a refined use of the Poo Poo Head joke and therefore much funnier than just a simple knock knock joke.

Comedy is a difficult skill to teach your children, but I warn you a good joke depository is imperative to their growth and development. Unless you want your kid to be that one guy at the party who wears an arrow on their head and calls it a ‘crazy gag’! You don’t want that and I don’t want that.

The trick when telling your kids new jokes is to keep them very simple so they’ll actually tell them correctly. There is very little more painful than sitting through several botched punchlines and laughing politely. It’s like a bad first date without the free meal. You also want to release your jokes in a measured way so that when you are can’t stand one more ‘Why did the chicken cross the road?’ (A= “Poo Poo Head!”) (Not funny!), you’ll have another in your holster to switch gears. Once you have a few jokes between you it’s easier to distract them with a bit of a ‘joke-off’.

Here are a few to get you started and I want to hear your kid’s best jokes and also their most annoying ones.
The Interrupting Cow joke I picked up on Fussy’s blog is maybe the best thing I’ve gotten out of the internet in the last 9 years. It’s even better than the fact that I can order pizza on the internet without ever going near a phone.

Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Interrupting Cow.
Interrupt….
MOO!
The Starfish Variation is also a HUGE favorite around here.
Knock Knock
Who’s There?
Interrupting Starfish.
Interruptin….
[Put your ‘starfish-like’ hand over the face of the victim.]
(I like to make a popping sound with my mouth when I do it. I’m hilarious!)

Pirates are often popular among young children, something about the freedom of the high seas and the constant threat of scurvy really speaks to kids.
Have you seen the new pirate movie?
It’s rated AARRR

I learned this joke for kids from Pulp Fiction, wasn’t that just a mad cap hilarious romp perfect for kids? Haaaa! It’s a little more involved and doesn’t work as well for my five year old who butchers the whole thing rendering it nothing but a bunch of nonsense strung together with hysterical laughter at the end. Which sort of sounds like how I’d describe every conversation I ever had with my Krazy Aunt Kay. I’m not talking ‘Wacky!’ I’m talking ‘I saw you in the womb before you were born! HA HA HA HA HA!” Wacky!

Oh right, the joke:
A daddy tomato, a mommy tomato and a baby tomato were walking down the street.
The baby tomato lags behind so the daddy tomato goes back and squishes him and says:
“Ketchup!”

This one is one my friend’s dad used to tell all the time. This friend’s dad liked to drink manhattans in the evening after work and tell increasingly ridiculous jokes as the evening progressed. We’d listen and laugh intently, hoping for the time he’d finally finish the “There once was a man from Nantucket….” limerick.

Apparently there wasn’t enough bourbon in the world to get him to tell us this horribly lewd limerick. In fact, I never heard the end and had kind of forgotten about it so I looked it up and my my, let’s all be thankful Mr. M could hold his liquor.

I’m sharing this joke but please know that I am the only one in my family who laughs when I tell it. The kids either don’t get it (Max) or are already turning adolescent and eye roll-ish and are counting the days until college, “So stop telling your lame jokes, Mother.” (Madison).

A piece of string walks into a bar, climbs up on the bar stool and orders a drink from the bartender.
The bartender looks at the string and says, “We don’t serve your kind in this place.”
The string gets up and walks outside.
He ties himself into a knot, frays up the ends of himself and walks back into the bar.
He climbs back up on a stool and says, “I’d like a drink please.”
The bartender says, “Look! I told you before we don’t serve your type. You’re that same string who was in here earlier aren’t you?”
The string says, “Nope! I’m a frayed knot.”

I love that joke so much. Oh God I’ve become that ‘Kooky’ guy with the arrow on his head haven’t I?

Help me expand my repetoire won’t you? What are the best (and worst) jokes your kids are telling?