Children's quiz questions and answers

4. Count back 2 from 6: 4.

True. Count back 3 from 6: 3.

False. One more than 2 is 3. Count on one from 2: 3.

6. Count on 1 from 5: 6.

False. 12 + 8 = 20. Count on 8 from 12: 20.

True. The numbers go up by 1 each time, so the next number is 10.

8. The numbers go up by 2 each time, so the next number is 8.

12. Count back one from 13: 12.

55. Count in fives 11 times: 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55.

False. 8 × 10 = 80. Count in tens 8 times: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80.

True. A pentagon has 5 straight sides and 5 corners.

6. A hexagon has 6 straight sides and 6 corners.

Age 5 True or false: This is the flag of Brazil.

True. It's Brazil.

Age 5 Which country's flag is this?

• United Kingdom
• China
• Jamaica
• India

United Kingdom. The UK's flag combines the crosses of St George, St Andrew and St Patrick.

Age 6 True or false: This is the flag of Italy.

False. It's Turkey (Türkiye). Istanbul, Türkiye's biggest city, sits on two continents: Europe and Asia.

Age 6 Which country's flag is this?

• Switzerland
• India
• United States
• Canada

Switzerland. Switzerland is one of only two countries with a square flag. The other is Vatican City.

Age 7 Which country's flag is this?

• Kenya
• Cuba
• Australia
• Finland

Finland. Finland has about 188,000 lakes.

Age 7 True or false: This is the flag of South Africa.

True. It's South Africa. South Africa has 12 official languages, including South African Sign Language.

Carrot.

Earth. Earth is the only planet whose English name doesn't come from a Greek or Roman god.

False. It ate meat. T. rex had one of the strongest bites of any land animal ever, strong enough to crunch through bone.

True. Puppies are born with their eyes shut. They open after about two weeks.

Ankylosaurus. Woolly mammoths lived in the last Ice Age, more than 60 million years after the giant dinosaurs died out.

Petals. Bright petals help insects find the flower.

True.

False. Plenty were small. Compsognathus was about the size of a chicken.

An astronaut. Astronauts practise spacewalks underwater, in giant swimming pools.

Reptile. Snakes flick their tongues to collect smells from the air.

Scorpling. Scorpions glow under ultraviolet light.

Meat. Spinosaurus caught fish with long, crocodile-like jaws and cone-shaped teeth.

The Sun. The Sun is our very own star. The stars you see at night are suns too, just much farther away.

True. Mars gets its colour from rusty dust that covers the ground.

Brachiosaurus. Brachiosaurus probably held its neck high, like a giraffe, to reach leaves high up in the trees.

were. Were has no h. Where, with an h, is the one about places.

push. Push and pull are both spelt with the letter u in the middle.

pull. Pull ends in double l, just like full.

climb. Climb ends in a silent b, just like thumb and lamb.

many. Take the m off many and you've got any. Both are spelt with a.

True. Whole means all of something. A hole is a gap. Only whole has a w.

135 → 315 → 513 → 531. Compare the hundreds first, then the tens, then the ones.

6. Think backwards: 6 × 3 = 18, so 18 ÷ 3 = 6.

False. 36 + 32 = 68. Tens, then ones: 30 + 30 = 60, 6 + 2 = 8, so 60 + 8 = 68.

10. Go through the 7 times table: 7 × 10 = 70.

10. Go through the 4 times table: 4 × 10 = 40.

800. The 8 is in the hundreds place, so its value is 800.

13. To find an eighth, divide by 8: 104 ÷ 8 = 13.

77. Find 1/8 first: 88 ÷ 8 = 11. Then 7 lots of 11 make 77.

11.54. Line up the decimal points: 7.80 + 3.74 = 11.54.

Norway. Norway has sent London the giant Christmas tree in Trafalgar Square every year since 1947.

Age 8 True or false: This is the flag of the United States.

True. It's the United States. The 50-star US flag has been flown since 1960, longer than any version before it.

Age 8 Which country's flag is this?

Spain. Spain's national anthem has no official words.

Sweden. Sweden has around 267,000 islands, more than any other country.

Eiffel Tower. Oldest first: Great Pyramid (about 2560 BC), Forbidden City (1420), Taj Mahal (about 1650), Eiffel Tower (1889).

Age 9 Which country's flag is this?

• Ethiopia
• Egypt
• Ghana
• Kenya

Ghana. The black star on Ghana's flag gave its football team a nickname: the Black Stars.

Dakar. Senegal's Lake Retba is famous for its bright pink water.

Lima. Machu Picchu, in Peru, was built by the Inca in the 1400s.

North America. Jamaica lies south of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea.

Sofia. Bulgaria grows so many roses that it makes a large share of the world's rose oil, used in perfume.

Age 10 Which country's flag is this?

• Canada
• Jamaica
• Costa Rica
• United States

Costa Rica. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1948.

Mexico. At the spring and autumn equinoxes, shadows on Chichén Itzá's great pyramid look like a snake sliding down the steps.

Habitat. A pond, a forest and a desert are all habitats.

False. It ate meat. Carnotaurus had bull-like horns, and arms even tinier for its size than a T. rex's.

About a month. From one full Moon to the next takes about 29 and a half days.

Animals only. A lion's roar can be heard up to 8 km away.

True. Nitrogen is a non-metal. About four fifths of every breath you take is nitrogen. Your body breathes it straight back out.

Our galaxy. On very dark nights, the Milky Way looks like a faint, glowing band across the sky.

True. Iguanodon was one of the first giant prehistoric dinosaurs ever named, from teeth found in Sussex in the 1820s.

Icy lands near the poles. Polar bears have black skin under their white fur.

Metamorphosis. Metamorphosis means a big change of body shape. Tadpoles do it too, when they turn into frogs.

Styracosaurus. Long spikes stuck out from the edge of its frill.

False. Lead is a solid. Romans made water pipes from lead, and plumbers are named after it. Pb comes from the Latin plumbum.

New Moon → Waxing crescent → First quarter → Waxing gibbous → Full Moon. Waxing means growing. After the full Moon, it wanes, or shrinks, back again.

Columbus reaches the Americas (1492) → Great Fire of London (1666) → Titanic sinks (1912). The Titanic sank in 1912. It hit an iceberg on its very first voyage, from Southampton to New York.

Stonehenge's big stones raised. Stonehenge's big stones were raised in around 2500 BC. Most of its smaller bluestones came from the Preseli Hills in Wales.

True. Great Pyramid of Giza built: around 2560 BC. First people on the Moon: 1969. People first walked on the Moon in 1969. Neil Armstrong went first. Buzz Aldrin followed him down the ladder about 20 minutes later.

Henry VIII becomes king. Henry VIII became king in 1509, 405 years before the First World War began.

11th century (the 1000s). The Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066, which is in the 11th century.

20th century (the 1900s). The NHS was founded in 1948, which is in the 20th century.

calendar. Calendar has lend in the middle and ends in ar.

True. Bel, ie, ve. Remember: never believe a lie.

False. Though rhymes with go. Through rhymes with zoo. Same ough, different sounds.

accidentally. Accidentally is accidental plus ly, so it has a double l.

True. The s was added hundreds of years ago, because people thought island came from isle.

vegetable. Vegetable has get in the middle: ve, get, able.

10.01. Line up the decimal points: 5.40 + 4.61 = 10.01.

0.25 → 0.4 → 0.55 → 0.6. 0.4 is the same as 0.40, so it is bigger than 0.25.

7.64. Line up the decimal points: 3.30 + 4.34 = 7.64.

32. Find 1/5 first: 40 ÷ 5 = 8. Then 4 lots of 8 make 32.

−8 → −6 → −1 → 2. The further below zero, the smaller the number, so −8 is the smallest here.

11. Think backwards: 11 × 24 = 264, so 264 ÷ 24 = 11.

7. Divide to find it: 315 ÷ 45 = 7, because 45 × 7 = 315.

True. Divide to find it: 350 ÷ 35 = 10, because 35 × 10 = 350.

108. 10% of 360 is 36, and 30% is 3 lots of that: 108.

False. It's Dhaka. Bangladesh's red disc sits slightly off centre so it looks centred when the flag flies.

Vietnam. Ha Long Bay is dotted with well over a thousand limestone islands rising out of the sea.

Asia. South Korea sits at the southern end of the Korean Peninsula.

Age 11 Which country's flag is this?

• Singapore
• Indonesia
• Philippines
• Thailand

Singapore. Singapore is a city-state made up of one main island and more than 60 smaller ones.

Parthenon → Angkor Wat → Rialto Bridge → White House. Oldest first: Parthenon (about 440 BC), Angkor Wat (1100s), Rialto Bridge (1591), White House (1800).

Iraq → Afghanistan → Sri Lanka → Mongolia. The Tigris and Euphrates rivers both flow through Iraq.

Age 12 Which country's flag is this?

• Israel
• Bahrain
• Qatar
• China

Qatar. Bahrain is red. Qatar is a deeper maroon with more zigzag points.

Kinshasa. The Congo River is the deepest river in the world, more than 200 m deep in places.

North America. Haiti shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic.

True. Victoria Falls is on the border of Zambia and Zimbabwe. Victoria Falls' local name, Mosi-oa-Tunya, means the smoke that thunders.

Age 13 Which country's flag is this?

• Tonga
• Solomon Islands
• Fiji
• Samoa

Fiji. Fiji is made up of more than 300 islands.

Bamako. Timbuktu in Mali was once a great centre of learning, with huge libraries of handwritten books.

True. To a botanist, a fruit is the part that grows from a flower and holds the seeds. Tomatoes count.

Microraptor. Microraptor had four feathered wings, and its feathers were a glossy black.

Iron. Iron helps make blood red. Octopuses use copper instead, which turns their blood blue.

James Webb. James Webb sees infrared light, which lets it peer through clouds of dust in space.

False. Sound needs something to travel through, like air or water. Space is almost empty, so it's silent.

False. Your blood is always red. Veins only look blue because of the way light passes through your skin.

Palaeontologist. Palaeontologists study fossils. Archaeologists study things people left behind, so digging up dinosaurs is not their job.

Solid. Phosphorus is in your bones, your teeth and the DNA inside your cells.

1969. The astronauts left a plaque saying they came in peace for all mankind.

An adaptation. A camel's wide feet are an adaptation. They stop it sinking into the sand.

Mercury. Mercury is the only metal that is liquid at room temperature. Hg comes from hydrargyrum, meaning watery silver.

Terrible claw. It had a big, curved claw on the second toe of each foot.

Julius Caesar lands in Britain (55 BC) → Roman rule in Britain ends (around AD 410) → Mayflower sails to America (1620) → Telephone patented (1876) → First powered aeroplane flight (1903). The Wright brothers made the first powered aeroplane flight 1,957 years after Julius Caesar first landed in Britain.

18th century. The Bastille was stormed in 1789, which is in the 18th century.

True. First World War fighting ends: 1918. Elizabeth II is crowned: 1953. Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953. She became queen in 1952 and was crowned the next year. Millions watched it on television.

Howard Carter finds Tutankhamun's tomb. Howard Carter found Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922, 49 years before the UK switched to decimal money.

15th century. The Battle of Bosworth was fought in 1485, which is in the 15th century.

1687. His book, the Principia, also set out his law of gravity.

First Harry Potter book. The first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, 15 years before London hosted the Olympics for the third time.

False. He reached the summit together with Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa mountaineer.

1348. The plague went on to kill perhaps a third to a half of the people in England.

Arigatō (ありがとう). Arigatō gozaimasu is the more polite version, for teachers and people you do not know well.

soldier. Soldier has an i you don't hear, just before the e.

dessert. Dessert has double s, just like a second helping.

Xin chào. Vietnamese uses the Latin alphabet, with extra marks that show tones and vowel sounds.

harass. Harass has one r and double s. Embarrass has two of each.

Hawaiian. Mahalo nui loa means thank you very much in Hawaiian.