Some of the better excuses kids tell their parents to write:

Please excuse Lisa for being absent. She was sick and I had her shot.

Dear School. Please excuse Johnbeing absent on Jan, 28,29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33

Please excuse Gloria from Jim today. She is administerating.

Please excuse Roland from PE for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.

Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.

Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.

Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.

Please excuse Ray Friday from school. He has very loose vowels.

Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had diahre dyrea diretha the sh....

Please excuse Tommy for being absent yesterday. HE had diarrhea and his boots leak.

Source Western Teacher Newspaper August 2000

Ah the beauty of technology.

Always have a document open, that way when a parent walks by we can flick to that and pretend we are editing.

If you have a Google (or other search engine) results listing up as well, you can also pretend to be researching the latest topic. Whilst you may have to do this for schoolwork anyway, you can use the online time effectively - We can hide behind research, and we can chat online to our friends - MSN, Yahoo Chat and now Twitter - multiple screens allow us to pretend we are working, but in the background our "real" work continues.

Whenever a parent (usually your mum) asks you to do anything, always respond in the positive  "sure, but can I clean my room first?". No parent is going to sop you from cleaning your room to do something else are they?

Unless of course the something is to clean your room, then you need to respond "OK, but I need to finish this assignment first".

Of course when said parent later finds you lying on your bed listening to music, and they want to know why you aren't cleaning, tell them you were, but bending down had made you feel dizzy, so you thought it wise to lie down before you suffered a major headache.