** Works For Me Wednesday visitors get in on the fun by reading below. Find your way back to ”Don’t Try This at Home” here. **

It’s Monday. Again. Strange how it comes around with such amazing regularity…

Are you feeling a little down? A little dreary? A little blue?

Monday FunDay

Join us every Monday and find out how to make it a Fun Day–we can encourage each other with some good, clean, simple, everyday fun.

Write up a post at your blog with a story, idea, or explanation of how you and/or your family has livened up Mondays (or any day), then link back (using Mr. Linky below), so that we can collect some great fun ideas in one place. If you don’t have a blog, feel free to leave your FunDay ideas in the comments. Ideas, by the way, must be squeaky-clean, family-friendly fun.

Here’s what we did last week. I think the fun started on Tuesday and lasted all week long.

One of my daughters was reading a Curious George collection and came across the story where he folds a bunch of paper hats and boats with the newspapers he was supposed to deliver–naughty monkey! She was inspired. Digging out newspapers from the recycling stack, she proceeded to fold numerous hats and wore them all around town. Now let me tell you, that’s fun. People just loved seeing a sweet girl confidently wearing an oversized paper hat! She brought smiles everywhere she went.

Well, before long, all the kids got into the act. They followed the instructions in the Curious George book and made hat after hat. For a few minutes, they were Robin Hood, and other times they were navy admirals. The main folder modeled one of her hats, sliding it around this way and that. I suggested she might resemble Napoleon, and she struck a pose something like this.

So all that folding reminded me of a recent conversation with some moms about “cootie catchers.” Remember those? We used to fold and design those all the time in school when I was a kid.

My kids hadn’t seen them, so we looked for folding instructions online. This site explains how to fold them and gives ideas for silly “fortunes” that you can write under the flaps. In spite of all the laughter generated by those goofy predictions (“You will eat nothing but corndogs for a year” or, “You will have all the pets you ever wanted”), I preferred encouraged conversation starters or story-starters under the flaps, instead. Here are eight conversation starters you can use if you and your kids want to try folding them–I think that’s the right number for a “conversation catcher”:

• Describe your perfect day.
• Name three places you hope to visit one day.
• Tell about an embarrassing moment.
• What are your top three favorite foods?
• How would you like to change the world?
• What’s your favorite day of the week…and why?
• Who’s your hero…and why?
• Would you ever go skydiving? Why or why not?

You could do anything with them. A Fun Day idea would be to write out crazy things to do:

• Sing a few lines from your favorite song.
• Flip on the radio and dance like a robot.
• Hold your breath for as long as you can.
• Spin around 7 times and then try to walk a straight line.

You get the idea.

A fun side benefit? Early readers get practice spelling if you use colors or shapes in your designs. If they are holding the “Fun Catcher” (I just renamed it), and colored dots are on the outside, they have to spell the color as part of the process. “G-R-E-E-N.” Draw shapes and they have to spell those. “C-I-R-C-L-E.” You could draw anything you’d like them to practice spelling on those outside flaps. “D-O-G” or “H-O-U-S-E.”

Here’s a simple sample of one of the dozens that brought a lot of hilarity to our household.

Instructions for Mr. Linky:

1. After you’ve typed up your Monday FunDay edition for this week and posted it at your blog, come back here and click on Mr. Linky to add your link.

2. A window will prompt you to type in your name. Type in your name or blog name, and in parenthesis, include a two- or three-word “teaser” for your idea. Something like this:

Ann K (folding fun)

3. Below that is a spot for you to paste in the url of your post. Copy the url for your own Monday FunDay idea and paste it in (including the http:// part of it).

That’s it! It should be saved by Mr. Linky and appear back at this post. To see what others have posted, click on Mr. Linky and pay a visit to the fun bloggers who have joined in!

Next time your coworkers or neighbors complain about how depressing Mondays are, send them here, to discover ways that they can make their Mondays…funner.

It’s fun to have fun, but you have to know how!