115 Fun Facts About Fall Trivia for Kids

The season name 'fall' is short for which old phrase?

'Fall of the leaf' was a 1500s English phrase for the season; it was clipped to 'fall' in the 1600s and crossed to America with English settlers, while Britain later settled on 'autumn'.

Fall comes after which season and before which?

After summer, before winter: Earth's tilted axis is the reason, because as the year moves on the North Pole points less and less toward the Sun, so the north gets less sunlight and cools.

What do we call the thin white coat of ice crystals on grass after a cold, clear fall night?

Frost forms when water vapour in the air freezes straight onto cold grass and windows without turning to liquid first; on a night that stays above freezing, the same moisture settles as dew.

Which three months do weather forecasters call fall in the Northern Hemisphere?

Forecasters define fall as September, October and November in the Northern Hemisphere, three whole months that are easy to compare year to year. South of the equator the same block is March, April and May.

What happens to the days as fall goes on?

They get shorter because the northern half of Earth is tipping away from the Sun, and the shrinking only stops on the shortest day of the year, in late December.

Which US holiday is often treated as the informal end of summer and start of fall?

Labor Day began with a parade of about 10,000 New York workers in 1882, and Congress made it a national holiday twelve years later; it is now treated as the unofficial end of summer.

The word 'autumn' comes from which old language?

Latin gave us autumn, from autumnus, which reached English in the 1300s by way of Old French; the word 'fall' was once common in England too, before autumn won out there.

What is the day in early fall when day and night are about the same length called?

The equinox, whose name means 'equal night', falls between September 21 and 24, when the Sun is directly above the equator and day and night are nearly equal everywhere.

On the day in fall when day and night are equal, where does the Sun rise and set?

Due east and west: on that one day the Sun rises due east and sets due west almost everywhere on Earth; from then until late December it rises and sets a little further south each day.

When it is fall in the Northern Hemisphere, what season starts in the Southern Hemisphere?

Spring begins south of the equator just as fall begins in the north, because the two halves of Earth always lean opposite ways; Australia and South Africa warm up while the north cools.

The same chemicals that turn fall leaves red give which of these fruits its colour?

Blueberries owe their colour to anthocyanins, which also turn fall leaves red; they can look red, purple or blue depending on how acidic the plant's cells are.

What is the green stuff in leaves called?

Chlorophyll looks green because green is the one colour of light it sends back to your eyes; it sits in tiny parts of the leaf's cells called chloroplasts.

Why do leaves lose their summer colour in the fall?

Their green pigment breaks down in fall and the tree makes no more, because it is busy pulling nutrients back into its branches and sealing off each leaf stalk before winter.

Where do the yellow colours in fall leaves come from?

The yellows come from pigments hidden in the leaf all summer, called carotenoids, the same family that colours dandelions and marigolds; the leaf's summer green simply covers them up.

What does the green pigment in a leaf do for the plant?

The green pigment catches sunlight to make food: in photosynthesis the leaf uses that light energy to turn water and a gas from the air into sugar.

What is the nickname for tourists who travel to see the colours of fall?

Leaf peepers bring New England so much money each fall that its states compete for them with adverts and cheap lodging.

What word describes trees that drop their leaves every year?

It means falling off at maturity; baby teeth are called deciduous teeth for the same reason.

What is the opposite of a tree that drops all its leaves each year?

An evergreen keeps green leaves all year; it still sheds its old ones, but gradually and never all at once.

What is the name for all the leaves on a tree taken together?

Foliage is all of a plant's leaves together; broad-leaved trees drop theirs before winter to avoid cold damage and save energy through the hardest months.

What do leaves take in from the air to make food?

Leaves take in carbon dioxide through tiny pores called stomata and use it, with water, to build sugar, letting oxygen back out through the same pores.

The body turns the orange colouring of pumpkins and carrots into which vitamin?

Vitamin A is made in the body from carotene, which is named after the carrot; eat a great deal of carotene and your skin can even turn slightly orange.

A pumpkin is a type of what?

A pumpkin is a squash, a member of the gourd family along with zucchini and cucumbers; botanically its fruit is a kind of berry called a pepo.

The heaviest pumpkin of 2023 weighed about as much as which of these?

A small car: the record pumpkin of October 2023 weighed 2,749 pounds, or 1,247 kg. Giants like it taste poor, so growers have been known to hollow them out and race them as boats.

Which little creatures usually pollinate pumpkin flowers?

Bees do the job, carrying pollen from the vine's male flowers to its female ones; where bees are scarce, gardeners have to do the job themselves, by hand.

Which part of a pumpkin do people roast to make a crunchy snack?

The seeds are dried or roasted until crunchy and sold as pepitas; some pumpkins are even bred to grow seeds with no tough white shell, purely for snacking.

What is a carved pumpkin with a face called?

A jack-o'-lantern had meant both a night watchman with a lantern and the eerie glow that flickers over bogs before the name reached carved pumpkins in 1830s America.

Before pumpkins, what vegetable did people in Ireland carve into lanterns?

Turnips with scary faces were set in Irish windows and doorways to frighten off wandering spirits; Irish immigrants took the custom to America, the home of the pumpkin.

The carved pumpkin lantern is linked to an Irish legend about a man called what?

The legend tells of Stingy Jack, who tricked the Devil more than once and, barred from both heaven and hell, was left to wander the night with a single glowing coal for a lantern.

Which part of a pumpkin plant grows into the pumpkin itself?

The flower is where it starts: each female flower has a tiny green ball at its base, and once pollen reaches it that ball swells into the pumpkin.

On what date is Halloween?

Halloween is October 31, the evening before All Hallows' Day (All Saints' Day) on November 1; the name is short for All Hallows' Eve.

What is the big iron pot that a storybook witch stirs her potion in called?

A cauldron bubbles in Shakespeare's Macbeth, where three witches walk round it chanting 'Double, double, toil and trouble; fire, burn; and cauldron, bubble'.

Mushrooms pop up in damp woods every fall, but which group of living things do they belong to?

Fungi are a kingdom of their own, neither plant nor animal; a mushroom is only the fruiting part, pushed up by a web of fine threads hidden in the soil or wood.

Which Scottish and Irish door-to-door custom grew into trick-or-treating?

Guising sent costumed children from house to house, where each had to earn the treat first, with a song, a poem or a joke.

How does a house often show it has candy for trick-or-treaters?

A porch light left on is the usual signal that a house is handing out candy, and a dark porch means skip it; some people just leave a bowl out on the honour system.

Around the Day of the Dead, children in Mexico ask neighbours for a 'calaverita', meaning a little what?

Skull: calaverita is the pet form of calavera, Spanish for skull. Children are given sweets or coins, and sugar skulls with a name iced across the forehead are swapped as gifts.

Which three colours are on a piece of candy corn?

Candy corn is striped yellow, orange and white; the wide yellow end is meant to look like a kernel of corn.

Candy corn was once sold under which farmyard name?

Chicken Feed was the name the Goelitz firm, now Jelly Belly, sold it under from 1898, when sweet-makers were pitching farm-themed candy to a largely rural America.

Which animal is an old sign of bad luck when it crosses your path?

A black cat crossing your path is an old sign of bad luck; in medieval Europe black cats were linked to witches, which is why they turn up in Halloween decorations.

What is the British name for the red sugar-coated fruit on a stick sold at fall fairs?

A toffee apple is what Americans call a candy apple; in Britain it is a Halloween and Bonfire Night treat because both nights come just after the apple harvest.

Which scientist said the idea of gravity came to him while watching an apple fall from a tree?

Isaac Newton told the story himself as an old man, over tea under some apple trees; the part where the apple bonks him on the head was added later by other storytellers.

Which soft golden sweet are apples on sticks dipped in, then often rolled in chopped nuts?

Caramel is sugar heated slowly until it browns, usually with butter stirred in; the apples are dipped while it is still hot, then left to cool so the coat sets.

Roughly how many kinds of apples are there?

Around 7,500 kinds of apple are grown around the world: taste a new one every single day and it would take you more than 20 years to try them all.

Where did apple trees first come from?

Central Asia is the apple's home: its wild ancestor still grows in the Tian Shan mountains of Kazakhstan, and traders on the Silk Road carried apples west to Europe.

What is the seed-filled middle of an apple called?

The core is, to a botanist, the apple's true fruit: its chambers, usually five, hold the seeds, while the sweet part we eat is extra flesh that swells up around it.

For centuries the English word 'apple' could mean which of these?

Any fruit: until the 1600s 'apple' was a general word for fruit, so old writers called dates 'finger-apples' and a banana an 'apple of paradise'.

What do Americans mean when they order apple pie 'à la mode'?

À la mode means served with a scoop of ice cream, usually vanilla; the phrase is French for 'in the fashion'. An old English habit puts a slice of sharp cheddar on top instead.

What was Johnny Appleseed's real name?

John Chapman did not scatter seeds at random, as the legend has it: he planted fenced apple nurseries ahead of the settlers and sold them the young trees.

Johnny Appleseed is often pictured wearing what on his head?

A cooking pot: early accounts say he wore a tin pan that doubled as his cap and his mush pot, went barefoot, and dressed in an old coffee sack with holes cut for his arms.

What is a field of fruit trees, where families go apple picking each fall, called?

An orchard's apple trees are nearly always grafted rather than grown from pips: a seed from a sweet apple grows into a tree with quite different, and usually worse, fruit.

What is the British name for the puzzle path cut into a cornfield in the fall?

Maize maze is the British name because corn is called maize there, which makes the two words sound exactly alike.

What is the horn-shaped basket spilling over with fall fruit and vegetables called?

A cornucopia is also called the horn of plenty; in one Greek myth it was the horn of the goat that fed the baby Zeus, and it could pour out food without end.

Which machine cuts and gathers crops like wheat and corn in the fall?

A combine harvester cuts the crop, separates the grain from the stalks and cleans it in one pass, which is how the 'combine' got its name.

What is dried grass that farmers store to feed animals through winter called?

Hay is grass cut and dried in summer and stored for winter feed; straw is the dry stalks left after grain is harvested and is mostly used as bedding.

In 'The Wizard of Oz', what does the Scarecrow wish he had?

A brain is his wish, yet the Scarecrow proves the cleverest of the travellers all along; in the book the Wizard simply fills his head with bran, pins and needles.

Nagoro, a mountain village where scarecrow dolls far outnumber the people, is in which country?

Japan's Nagoro has shrunk to a few dozen residents, so Tsukimi Ayano sews life-size scarecrow dolls of neighbours who died or moved away; she has made hundreds.

What is the nut of an oak tree called?

An acorn sits in a little woody cup; squirrels bury acorns for winter, and any they never dig up again can sprout into new oak trees.

Which wild berry do people pick from prickly bramble bushes in late summer and early fall?

Blackberry picking has a deadline in old British and Irish folklore: after Old Michaelmas Day in October the Devil is said to spoil the fruit, so it is left on the bush.

A group of squirrels is called what?

A scurry. In winter, several squirrels may move into a single nest and share it.

What special trick can tree squirrels do that most mammals cannot?

Climb down headfirst: tree squirrels can turn their back ankles right around, so the hind claws hook into the bark and hold them as they run down the trunk.

The word 'squirrel' goes back to a Greek name usually read as meaning what?

Shade tail: the Greek skiouros looks like skia (shade) plus oura (tail), perhaps for an animal that sits in the shadow of its own bushy tail, though some scholars suspect that story grew up later.

Where do chipmunks carry food when they take it home for winter?

In their cheek pouches: chipmunks cram them with seeds and nuts and unload them in the burrow, because that hidden store is what they rely on to get through the winter.

What kind of animal is a chipmunk?

A chipmunk is a small striped ground squirrel in the same family as tree squirrels; almost all kinds live in North America, with one, the Siberian chipmunk, in Asia.

Which hibernating animal do Americans watch on February 2 for a sign that spring is near?

Groundhog. It is a true hibernator whose heart slows to only a few beats a minute, and legend says winter will last six more weeks if it sees its shadow that day.

Why do animals hibernate?

To save energy when food is scarce: a hibernator's body cools and its breathing and heartbeat slow right down, so it can go for months without a meal.

What do big animals like bears do before hibernating?

Eat huge amounts and get fat: in the fall, feeding becomes a bear's full-time job, because that fat is all it lives on in the den, where it neither eats nor drinks for months.

What do female black bears do while hibernating?

Give birth to cubs: black bear cubs are born in the winter den, usually in late January or early February, and feed on their mother's rich milk while she dozes on.

Many Canada geese now stay put all year instead of flying south in the fall, so what lets them?

Grassy parks and golf courses offer short grass to graze, open water and few predators all year, so many flocks now stay put instead of flying south each fall.

Which bird flies farthest each year, all the way from the far north to the far south?

The Arctic tern flies from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back, around 70,000 kilometres a year, so it sees two summers every year.

What mainly tells birds it is time to migrate?

The length of the days is the main cue: as daylight changes, birds grow restless and feed hard to fuel the trip, and a cold snap or dwindling food can give the final push.

Which butterfly flies south from the northern US to Mexico each fall?

Monarch. The butterflies that fly south live for months, not the few weeks their summer parents had, and spend the winter clustered in fir forests in the mountains of central Mexico.

What colours are the wings of the famous butterfly that migrates to Mexico?

Black, orange and white: the bright pattern warns birds that this butterfly tastes bad, thanks to poisons its caterpillars take in from the milkweed they eat.

What colour is the head of a Canada goose?

Black with white cheeks: the white patch wraps under the chin like a strap, which makes a Canada goose easy to tell from almost every other goose.

What is the name for the fleshy flap that hangs over a male turkey's beak?

The snood is the fleshy flap that hangs over a turkey's beak; the wattle hangs from the throat. When he is excited the snood swells and turns bright red.

What is a male turkey called?

A male turkey is a tom or gobbler; the female is a hen and a young male is a jake. Toms are much bigger and do the gobbling.

Which part of the world are wild turkeys native to?

North America. Tame turkeys were shipped to Europe in the 1500s and English colonists later carried their farm-bred descendants back, so the bird crossed the Atlantic twice.

What tuft grows from the middle of a male turkey's chest?

A beard: the tuft is a bundle of stiff, hair-like feathers that keeps growing all his life, and despite the name some hens grow one too.

On which day is Thanksgiving in the United States?

Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday of November, fixed by a law Franklin Roosevelt signed in 1941 after a few years of confusion over whether it fell on the fourth or the last Thursday.

Which foods are traditional at a US Thanksgiving dinner?

Turkey, potatoes and pumpkin pie are the classics now, yet the 1621 feast had no potatoes and no pies: the colonists had neither, nor the butter and wheat flour for pastry.

Which animal did the Pilgrims' Native guests kill and bring to the three-day feast of 1621?

Deer. The guests went out and killed five, colonist Edward Winslow wrote, and gave them to the governor and the captain as the feasting ran on for three days.

Which English-speaking Native American showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn?

Squanto, or Tisquantum, spoke English because an English captain had seized him years earlier and sold him into slavery in Spain, and he made his way home by way of England.

Which Native people joined the Pilgrims' 1621 harvest feast?

The Wampanoag: about 90 men arrived with their leader Massasoit, so the guests outnumbered the 50 or so colonists by nearly two to one.

What is the day after Thanksgiving called, when lots of people go shopping?

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is one of the busiest shopping days of the US year; Philadelphia police used the name for the traffic-jammed crowds that filled the city.

Which president made Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863?

Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November in 1863, during the Civil War, after years of campaigning by magazine editor Sarah Josepha Hale.

Which store puts on the famous Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City?

Macy's has put on the parade since 1924, when its employees dressed up in costume and marched six miles from Harlem to the store in Herald Square.

Who arrived at the very end of New York's first big Thanksgiving parade in 1924?

Santa Claus rode in at the rear on his sleigh and was crowned 'King of the Kiddies' outside the store, and he has closed the parade almost every year since.

Where did the live animals in New York's first big Thanksgiving parade, in 1924, come from?

The Central Park Zoo lent bears, elephants, camels and monkeys for the 1924 parade; from 1927 balloons took the animals' place, starting with Felix the Cat.

What does a fresh cranberry do when it is dropped on a hard floor?

It bounces: a firm, fresh cranberry springs back off a hard surface while a soft or damaged one barely moves, so growers have long sorted their berries by bouncing them.

Why do farmers flood cranberry bogs at harvest time?

Ripe cranberries float because each berry holds small pockets of air, so growers flood the bog, shake the fruit off the vines and skim it from the surface.

What did grower Marcus Urann start doing with cranberries in 1912 so they could be sold all year?

Canning them as sauce. Urann was a lawyer who had swapped his office for a cranberry bog, and his Ocean Spray sauce, the jellied log, reached shops nationwide in 1941.

A sweet potato is related to which garden flower?

Morning glory: the sweet potato belongs to the same plant family, Convolvulaceae, and despite its name it is only a distant cousin of the ordinary potato.

What spices go into pumpkin pie spice?

Cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and sometimes allspice: the blend is named for the pie it flavours and has no pumpkin in it at all.

Which coffee chain started selling pumpkin spice lattes in 2003?

Starbucks. For its first twelve years the chain's pumpkin spice latte contained no pumpkin at all; real pumpkin went into the recipe only in 2015.

What is maple syrup made from?

The tree's sap is thin and watery, so it is boiled until most of the water is gone: it takes roughly 40 gallons of sap to make a single gallon of syrup.

Which Canadian province makes most of the world's maple syrup?

Quebec makes more than 70 percent of the world's maple syrup, far ahead of Vermont, the top US state, and its producers' federation even keeps a reserve of syrup in store.

Who first made maple syrup?

Indigenous people of North America were making maple syrup and sugar long before Europeans arrived, and the settlers learned the craft from them.

What are maple seeds famous for?

Having wings: each seed carries a papery wing that makes it spin like a helicopter as it falls, so the wind can carry it well away from its parent tree.

An owl has 14 of what, twice a human's seven, letting it turn its head so far?

Neck bones. With fourteen an owl can swivel its head about 270 degrees, and extra-wide channels in those bones give its arteries room to move, so the blood supply is never cut off.

What is a group of owls called?

A group of owls is a parliament, a name popularised by C. S. Lewis's Narnia books, though most owls hunt alone at night so a real gathering is rare.

Why do owls have to turn their whole heads to look around?

Their eyes are fixed in their sockets: bony rings hold each huge eye in place, so an owl cannot roll its eyes and has to swivel its whole head instead.

Which are the only mammals that can truly fly?

Bats are the only mammals capable of true powered flight; flying squirrels, despite the name, only glide, as sugar gliders do.

What do most bats eat?

Most bats eat insects, snapping up moths, beetles and mosquitoes on the wing at night; only three vampire bat species drink blood, and many others eat fruit or nectar.

What is a hedgehog covered in?

Spines cover a hedgehog by the thousand, each one a hollow hair stiffened with keratin; the name comes from an animal that roots along hedges with a pig-like snout.

What game do British children play with horse chestnuts on strings?

Conkers is played with horse chestnuts threaded on strings: players take turns swinging at the other's nut until one smashes, and there is even a world championship.

On what date is Bonfire Night, or Guy Fawkes Night, in Britain?

Bonfire Night is November 5, the anniversary of the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605, when Guy Fawkes was caught guarding barrels of gunpowder under the House of Lords.

Diwali is often called the festival of what?

Diwali is the festival of lights: families light little clay oil lamps called diyas and set off fireworks to celebrate light winning over darkness.

What treat is eaten at China's Mid-Autumn Festival?

Mooncakes, round pastries filled with sweet bean or lotus-seed paste, are shared at the Mid-Autumn Festival, when families admire the full moon and children carry lanterns.

In which city is Oktoberfest held every year?

Oktoberfest is held in Munich, Bavaria; the first one, in October 1810, celebrated the wedding of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese with a horse race on the field now called the Theresienwiese.

In 'It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown', who waits all night in the pumpkin patch?

Linus waits in the pumpkin patch all night for the Great Pumpkin, with Sally keeping him company until she gives up; the special first aired on CBS in 1966.

In 'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving', what does Charlie Brown's gang serve the guests instead of turkey?

Toast, popcorn and jelly beans, plus pretzel sticks, are what Snoopy dishes up; Peppermint Patty complains until Marcie reminds her that she invited herself.

What is the name of the nervous schoolteacher in 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow'?

Ichabod Crane is the lanky, superstitious schoolmaster in Washington Irving's 1820 story; he rides to the Van Tassel party on a borrowed horse named Gunpowder and meets the Headless Horseman on the way home.

What is the full moon after the harvest moon traditionally called?

The hunter's moon usually falls in October, when the fields have been cleared and animals are easy to spot, so its bright light is said to have helped hunters stock up for winter.

In the Halloween game of bobbing for apples, how must you catch the apple?

With your teeth, and no hands allowed: the apples bob about because they are lighter than water, and in Scotland the game is called dooking.

What letter shape do flocks of geese make in the sky when they migrate in the fall?

A V lets each bird ride the rising air that swirls off the wingtips of the bird in front, which scientists think saves energy over a long trip.

What is a baby goose called?

A gosling is quick off the mark: a Canada goose chick can walk, swim and feed itself within a day or two of hatching.

What is the soft, fuzzy skin covering a deer's growing antlers called?

Velvet is full of blood vessels that feed the growing bone; once the antlers reach full size it is shed, and the antlers themselves drop off and regrow every year.