Nothing to cut. The sheet stays in one piece and somebody reads straight down it, numbered one to sixteen with the answer under each question in smaller type. What do you call a snowman's dog? A slush puppy. How do you scare a snowman? Show him a hairdryer. Fifty jokes sit in the children's set, all with short setups and a punchline that never leans on a phrase a six year old has not met yet.
One page, read straight down it
The list is numbered and each answer sits directly beneath its question, so a child who can read takes the sheet and works down it with nobody holding a key. There is nothing to cut, nothing to fold and nothing to hand out.
Under the heading the sheet says to read one out and then wait for the groan, which is the instruction that makes it work. Sixteen jokes takes about ten minutes in a car or a classroom if the sheet goes round and everybody takes a turn.
Jokes a six year old can tell
The children's set holds fifty, and the test behind every one of them is whether a child can both get it and repeat it afterwards. No setup rests on a saying they have not come across, which is the usual reason a joke written for adults falls flat on a seven year old.
Animals do most of the work. What do you call an arctic cow? An eski-moo. What do you call a penguin in the desert? Lost. Where a word has to be bent out of shape for the pun, it is a word a child already owns: gnome-work, short-bread, Decembrrrr.
One or two are worth learning by heart. What do you call a reindeer with no eyes and no legs? Still no eye deer. That one only lands on a room that has already heard the shorter version, which is exactly why it gets told second.
How the type size follows the list
The count offers ten, twelve, sixteen, twenty and twenty four. Ten and twelve run as a single column down the page; from sixteen up the list splits into two columns, which is what buys the larger type rather than costing it.
Size is taken off a ladder that starts at 14pt and steps down to 8pt, settling on the largest the whole list fits at. Whatever room is left over is then shared out as even gaps between the jokes, so a short list fills the paper instead of sitting in the top third of it.
That is most obvious on the ten joke sheet, which comes out large and widely spaced. It is the one to print for a child reading to a room rather than to themselves, and it survives being held at arm's length.
Questions
- How many Christmas jokes are on the sheet?
- Sixteen as it opens, with ten, twelve, twenty and twenty four on the count above the page. Ten and twelve print as one column; sixteen and above split into two so the type can stay large.
- Are the jokes suitable for a five or six year old?
- Yes. The punchlines in the children set never depend on a saying a young child has not met, and the setups are short. A slush puppy, an eski-moo and a chill pill are the level it works at.
- Do the answers print on the same page?
- Yes. Every answer sits directly under its question in smaller type, so there is no separate key to keep hold of and a child can work through the whole page unaided.
- Can I use these Christmas jokes in a classroom?
- This is the sheet for it. Twenty four numbered jokes on one page gives most classes a joke each, and the line under the heading tells whoever holds it to read one out and wait for the groan.
- Can I get a different list of jokes?
- Yes. Shuffle draws a new selection from the same fifty, so a second sheet is not the same jokes in the same order. The Which jokes control also moves the page to the family or cracker sets.