Fake Spider Hop Activity and “April Fool! Watch Out at School!” Book Review

by Ashley Beecher

In April Fool! Watch Out at School! by Diane deGroat, Gilbert wants to play the best trick on his friends for April Fools Day. Instead, he falls for the simplest tricks all day long and he can’t trick a single one of his friends. Even his mom sends a trick in his lunch! Gilbert doesn’t give up and finally thinks of the best trick of all. His friend falls for it.

The story does a good job of balancing fun tricks with kindness. It’s easy to get carried away with trying to play the best trick and sometimes people’s tricks are unkind. Gilbert’s harmless trick ends up being the best one! The book shows lots of reactions to the different tricks, but in most cases everyone thinks they’re funny, including the person getting tricked.

The illustrations hold one final fun game: the pictures in the book have their own tricks. See if you can spot them all while you read, then you can check the list in the beginning of the book, on the back of the title page, to make sure you’ve found them all.

To buy this book on Amazon, click here.

Be the first to get from the starting desk to the finish desk in this April Fool’s themed board game. Won’t that be the best trick?

Supplies:

Free Printouts (download from the buttons below), scissors, glue, crayons or markers

Directions:

1. Print the templates and color them, making sure the spider pieces are all different colors.
2. Cut out the spider pieces and the die on the solid lines. Fold the die on the dotted lines and add glue to the small flaps to make a cube.
3. Once the die dries, you’re all ready to play the game! Read the directions below.
   1. Place a fake spider game piece on start for each player.
   2. Let the youngest player roll the die first, and move their fake spider the number of desks they roll.
   3. Move clockwise to give each player a turn.
   4. Whoever makes it to the finish desk first, wins!