What's Funny to a Preschooler?

By the preschool years, kids are humor veterans. After all, they've been smiling and laughing for years. A reliable host of tricks and jokes will crack them up, and even as preschoolers get older, they continue to be amused by many of the things they found funny as toddlers.

Peekaboo will still get a laugh, only now kids like to extend it into giggly games of hide-and-seek. Expect your preschooler to continue to enjoy using objects in silly ways — putting mittens on feet, walking around the house in your shoes, or pretending a toy car is a phone.

But because a sense of humor is essentially an intellectual and emotional skill, it grows as your preschooler does. Your child is continually finding new things funny while developing a better and more sophisticated understanding of the world. And he or she is eager to show off new ways to be playful and laugh with you.

Humor is something you can enjoy together, but it’s more than just fun. The benefits of a good sense of humor are well documented and include better health, increased optimism, higher self-esteem, and greater emotional intelligence.

And the best thing is that these benefits are possible for anyone: Research shows that a sense of humor is learned, not inherited.

Hey There, Tommy – I Mean, Mommy!

A big activity for preschoolers is labeling things (that’s why you hear the question “what’s that?” all day long). Children this age are becoming aware that everything has a name and they love using their new vocabulary.

Your child is probably using improved language skills to play with words, like calling objects or people by the wrong names. Ask “where’s your nose?” and your child is likely to point at his or her eyes or chin. Kids this age often like to mispronounce or make up words. Join in on this game (“Billy, can you pass me the falt, I mean the palt, oh, that’s right, the salt”) and you’re likely to get a laugh.

Before long, your child will start replacing words in familiar songs — like singing “Twinkle, twinkle, little cat” — and experimenting with the same song for days or weeks by using new words (“Twinkle, twinkle, little chair” or “Twinkle, twinkle, little mommy”).

Your child might find humor in opposites — asked “where’s your room?” and answering “downstairs in the basement” instead of “upstairs”; or repeating in a sing-song way “now it’s time for dinner!” when you say “now it’s time for breakfast.”

Children this age will also start to tell little tales in a humorous way. You may find your child claiming to have eaten his or her spoon or to have hidden the dog. These stories may or may not be accompanied by a smile — some preschoolers are very deadpan.

A Fish on a Bicycle — Now That’s Funny!

Language play is not the only thing preschoolers find funny. They have a sophisticated grasp of what objects “should” look like or how things “should” work. Change a characteristic appearance or behavior and you’ve got something that’s funny to your child. These include: