Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
79 free 4th Grade trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This set is written for fourth graders, which means the questions lean on what a nine or ten year old is actually learning: US state capitals and the biggest and smallest states, the planets and the Moon, how the heart and skeleton work, animal facts, famous Americans like Lincoln, Rosa Parks and the Wright brothers, and a few shape and number questions from the math book. Use it for a classroom warm-up, a road trip, or family trivia night where the kids get to win for once. Most questions sit at an easy or medium level for the grade; a handful at the end are harder so there is something to stretch for. Every question has four choices and a short explanation that adds one extra fact, so a wrong answer still teaches something. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the state, animal, planet or person in question, and each question carries the sentence that supports it. Younger kids can try our First Grade and Second Graders sets; older ones can move on to Sixth and Eighth Grade Trivia.
30 of 79 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital city of California?
Sacramento
Sacramento is much smaller than Los Angeles, but it has been the seat of California's government since 1854.
Q 02Which city is the capital of Texas?
Austin
Houston, Dallas and San Antonio are all bigger, but the state government sits in Austin.
Q 03Which city is the capital of Florida?
Tallahassee
Tallahassee sits in the Florida Panhandle and became the capital in 1824, long before Miami or Orlando were big cities.
Q 04New York City is the biggest city in New York, but which city is the state capital?
Albany
Albany, on the Hudson River about 150 miles north of New York City, has been New York's state capital since 1797.
Q 05Which is the largest US state by area?
Alaska
It is bigger than Texas, California and Montana put together, and its capital, Juneau, cannot be reached by road.
Q 06Which is the smallest US state by area?
Rhode Island
Rhode Island covers about 1,200 square miles, the smallest of the 50 states; Delaware is the next smallest, at roughly twice the area.
Q 07Which US state is made up entirely of islands?
Hawaii
Hawaii is a chain of 137 volcanic islands; the eight main ones include Oahu, Maui and the Big Island of Hawaii, which gives the state its name.
Q 08The Mississippi River flows south and empties into which body of water?
The Gulf of Mexico
The Mississippi rises at Lake Itasca in Minnesota and runs about 2,340 miles south to empty into the Gulf of Mexico just below New Orleans.
Q 09How many Great Lakes are there?
Five
There are five Great Lakes: Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie and Ontario, so large and stormy they are sometimes called inland seas.
Q 10Which Great Lake is the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area?
Superior
Lake Superior covers about 31,700 square miles, the largest freshwater surface on Earth; only the far deeper Lake Baikal and Lake Tanganyika hold more water.
Q 11The Grand Canyon in Arizona was carved by which river?
The Colorado
The Colorado River cut down through layer after layer of rock, leaving canyon walls that record nearly two billion years of Earth's history.
Q 12Mount Rushmore, carved with four presidents' faces, is in which state?
South Dakota
Mount Rushmore is in South Dakota's Black Hills; its 60-foot faces of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Lincoln were carved between 1927 and 1941.
Q 13How many stripes are on the flag of the United States?
13
The flag has 13 stripes, one for each of the original colonies that declared independence from Britain in 1776, plus 50 stars for today's states.
Q 21In what year did Christopher Columbus first sail across the Atlantic and reach the Americas?
1492
Columbus left Spain in August 1492 with three ships and made landfall in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, believing he had reached Asia.
Q 22Who was the first person to walk on the Moon?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong commanded Apollo 11 and stepped onto the Moon on July 20, 1969, followed by Buzz Aldrin, while Michael Collins stayed in lunar orbit.
Q 23Rosa Parks became famous in 1955 for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in which city?
Montgomery, Alabama
Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, on December 1, 1955; the Montgomery bus boycott that followed lasted 381 days and helped launch the civil rights movement.
Q 14Which city is the capital of the whole United States?
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C. is not part of any state; it is a federal district on the Potomac River that has served as the national capital since 1800.
Q 15Who was the first president of the United States?
George Washington
George Washington served as the first president from 1789 to 1797 and lived at Mount Vernon in Virginia, where he grew tobacco and wheat.
Q 16Which president issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863?
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president, issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, declaring enslaved people in the rebelling states free in the middle of the Civil War.
Q 17Who was the main author of the Declaration of Independence?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration in June 1776, later became the third president, and died on July 4, 1826, exactly 50 years after it was adopted.
Q 18The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of which country?
France
France gave the statue to mark the US centennial; it was built in Paris around an iron frame by Gustave Eiffel, shipped in crates and assembled in New York Harbor in 1886.
Q 19In which city can you visit the Liberty Bell?
Philadelphia
The Liberty Bell is displayed in Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park; it cracked on its first test ring in 1753 and was recast twice by local founders John Pass and John Stow.
Q 20Which bird is the national bird of the United States?
Bald eagle
The bald eagle has been on the Great Seal since 1782 and was formally named the national bird in December 2024; it is not bald, its head is simply covered in white feathers.
Q 24Which famous speech did Martin Luther King Jr. give to a huge crowd in 1963?
"I Have a Dream"
King delivered "I Have a Dream" at the March on Washington on August 28, 1963; the speech ran about 17 minutes, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize the next year.
Q 25What was the last name of the two brothers who made the first successful airplane flight in 1903?
Wright
Orville and Wilbur flew their Wright Flyer near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
Q 26Which Founding Father invented the lightning rod and bifocal glasses?
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in the early 1750s and bifocals; he also designed the Franklin stove and refused to patent any of his inventions.
Q 27The Pilgrims sailed to America in 1620 aboard which ship?
The Mayflower
The Mayflower carried about 102 passengers across the Atlantic in 66 days, anchoring off the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, in November 1620.
Q 28Harriet Tubman helped about 70 people escape slavery via which network of safe houses?
The Underground Railroad
The Underground Railroad was not underground and had no trains; the name was code for the guides and safe houses that led escapees north, and Tubman made about 13 trips.
Q 29Which was the first national park in the United States?
Yellowstone
Yellowstone was created by Congress in March 1872 and is famous for Old Faithful, a geyser that erupts roughly every 60 to 90 minutes.
Q 30How many planets are in our Solar System?
Eight
Pluto used to be counted as the ninth planet until astronomers reclassified it as a dwarf planet in 2006.