Once a hearty laugh clears your mind and lifts your mood, you are better prepared to relate to the children who count on you. Have a bulletin board where amusing articles, posters, comics, cartoons, and bumper stickers can be posted. Make humor a regular part of your staff development. Humor is a splendiferous way to get and hold children's attention - it is the great communicator. Humor can motivate, promote teamwork and positive thinking, increase morale, relax everyone, and release creativity.
Children can more easily build positive relationships, if they have developed a sense of humor.
Since children may spend the majority of the leisure part of their day in an after-school program, humor, laughter and fun should permeate every part of it. An ideal way to encourage humor is through books in the quiet area. Children enjoy the humorous poetry of Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky. Keep several collections of jokes and riddles. Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Superfudge are just two of the many funny books by Judy Blume.