Helpful Homeschool Hint: Look for Opportunities to Laugh During Your Day

I recently finished reading The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin.  I highly recommend the book!  One of the author's resolutions for November was to laugh out loud.  Rubin asserts in The Happiness Project, "I vowed to find reasons to find things funny, to laugh out loud, and to appreciate other people's humor."  This particular resolution resonated deep within me since Mason, my taller-than-me 12 year old, is always trying to make me laugh.  I'm ashamed to admit that I don't always laugh at his jokes.  When I realized how much joy I'm stealing from him by not always laughing at his jokes, I was and continue to be ashamed.  The Happiness Project made me much more aware of the importance of letting other people be funny and I'm trying, I'm really trying.

While busily grading on Wednesday morning, I ran across a stray word with an arrow pointing to my son's sentence diagram.  Now, since nothing is ever funny about diagramming sentences, I tried to figure out why he had written the word LONELY with an arrow pointing to one side of the sentence diagram.  I checked the sentence and LONELY wasn't in it.  I was perplexed.

Then, it dawned on me.  Since the "we" was all alone on one side of the diagram and all of the modifiers were hanging out on the other side of the diagram, the "we" was lonely.  In the midst of doing his grammar work (which is certainly a challenge for Mason) he thought of me and tried to make me laugh.  I started to chuckle and then I started laughing, and before I knew it I was laughing really, really hard.

The laughter drew my teenage daughter from her Algebra work to see why I was laughing.  She didn't think it was funny but she laughed because I was laughing so hard.  Then Duncan came in to see why I was laughing and he quickly laughed - he is always quick to laugh.  Mason was working in his room so he didn't hear the commotion but when he came out to get more workboxes, I made it a point to tell him that he had made me laugh.  We both laughed together.

So, my Helpful Homeschool Hint is to look for opportunities during your school day and at other times to laugh with your children.

• Write funny sentences on the white board during writing or grammar lessons.  
• Read a funny book for a read-aloud for a change.  
• Write a new joke on the white board each day for your children to read each morning.  
• Tickle little children...or big teenagers.  
• Be silly sometimes.  
• Laugh at yourself...a lot.  
• Watch a funny video.  We love Tim Hawkins here.
• Listen to funny songs.
• Talk about funny times from the past.
• Play a game that usually leads to laughter.  Say Anything and Wits and Wagers usually make us laugh here.                                                                                                    

What do you do to encourage laughter at your house during your school days?  To read more Helpful Homeschool Hints, visit Angie at Many Little Blessings.