Fun April Fools' Pranks That Kids Will Love While Social Distancing

If you’ve got a printer handy, your kids can print off a bunch of photos of celebrities, cartoon characters, or just embarrassing family pics, then swap them into picture frames all over the house. Other family members will probably still stumble across them for days or weeks afterward.

Mashed potatoes make a great stand-in for ice cream in an un-sweet surprise sundae. Just top with the usual fixings like chocolate syrup and a cherry, then deliver it to an unsuspecting family member.

Many smartphones have features that allow users to automatically replace certain words with others. Go into the autocorrect settings on someone’s phone and set up corrections for common phrases like “hi” to be replaced with “I like iguanas” or any other phrase of your choosing.

Classic pranks never get old. Fill as many cups as you can find with water and gently set them up across the floor of a bedroom. When the victim discovers their room, they’ll have to pick the cups up one by one. That should fill up an afternoon.

If there’s no one at home to prank, help your kids prank a friend by signing them up for as many random digital newsletters as you can find. All you need is their email address and a little research time. Soon they’ll be getting random messages about cats, Eastern European foods, and go-karts.