Kellan: "Mama, why did the penguin drive the rollercoaster?"

Me: "Why?"

Kellan: "Hahahahaha!"

Okay. I guess I can see the humor in that. Kellan has gotten into jokes lately. What's funny to us is he doesn't understand the idea of delivering a punchline. We've told him the few kid-appropriate jokes we know, but he really just likes making up his own. They are on par with the one above. Ha ha, indeed.

While preschoolers don't quite have the language skills to understand words with double meanings or puns, they do understand when a situation is silly or unusual and they start telling jokes, even if the jokes don't exactly make sense.

Now that Kellan is interested in telling jokes, we try to encourage him to tell us stories - the sillier the better - and we are always searching for new kids jokes. Humorous books are great for tickling a child's funny-bone and starting a discussion. Kellan loves the Mr. Magee books, a series with whimsical illustrations and silly story lines. We have a couple of Shel Silverstein books and I look forward to when he understands the humor of the words and not just the pictures. Also, National Geographic books has a fun facts series for kids called Weird But True that is sure to keep his mind busy coming up with all sorts of hilarious questions.

How do you encourage humor in your house?