Fall Trivia for Kids
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115 free Fall Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This fall trivia for kids quiz is written for children roughly six to twelve, and for the teachers, parents and party hosts who need a round of easy autumn questions. It covers the things kids actually notice in fall: leaves turning yellow and red, acorns and squirrels, pumpkins and jack-o'-lanterns, apple picking and cider, animals getting ready to hibernate or fly south, the harvest moon and the first day of autumn, plus the big fall holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Bonfire Night, Diwali and the Mid-Autumn Festival. Everything is kid-safe. If you want the grown-up version, our main autumn trivia quiz has the harder questions. The questions start very easy (what colour a pumpkin usually is, what a baby sheep is not) and get a little trickier for older kids and parents (what makes leaves turn yellow, why squirrels bury acorns, which bird holds the record for the longest migration, how much the heaviest pumpkin ever weighed). Most of it can be worked out with a little thinking. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entry for the subject before publishing, and the sentence that supports it is stored with each question.
30 of 115 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The season name 'fall' is short for which old phrase?
Fall of the leaf
'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'.
Q 02Fall comes after which season and before which?
After summer, before winter
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.
Q 03What do we call the thin white coat of ice crystals on grass after a cold, clear fall night?
Frost
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.
Q 04Which three months do weather forecasters call fall in the Northern Hemisphere?
September, October, November
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.
Q 05What happens to the days as fall goes on?
They get shorter
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.
Q 06Which US holiday is often treated as the informal end of summer and start of fall?
Labor Day
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.
Q 07The word 'autumn' comes from which old language?
Latin
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.
Q 08What is the day in early fall when day and night are about the same length called?
The equinox
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.
Q 09On the day in fall when day and night are equal, where does the Sun rise and set?
Due east and west
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.
Q 10When it is fall in the Northern Hemisphere, what season starts in the Southern Hemisphere?
Spring
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.
Q 11The same chemicals that turn fall leaves red give which of these fruits its colour?
Blueberries
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.
Q 12What is the green stuff in leaves called?
Chlorophyll
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.
Q 13Why do leaves lose their summer colour in the fall?
Their green pigment breaks down
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.
Q 21The body turns the orange colouring of pumpkins and carrots into which vitamin?
Vitamin A
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.
Q 22A pumpkin is a type of what?
Squash
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.
Q 23The heaviest pumpkin of 2023 weighed about as much as which of these?
A small car
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.
Q 14Where do the yellow colours in fall leaves come from?
Pigments hidden in the leaf all summer
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.
Q 15What does the green pigment in a leaf do for the plant?
Catches sunlight to make food
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.
Q 16What is the nickname for tourists who travel to see the colours of fall?
Leaf peepers
Leaf peepers bring New England so much money each fall that its states compete for them with adverts and cheap lodging.
Q 17What word describes trees that drop their leaves every year?
Deciduous
It means falling off at maturity; baby teeth are called deciduous teeth for the same reason.
Q 18What is the opposite of a tree that drops all its leaves each year?
An evergreen
An evergreen keeps green leaves all year; it still sheds its old ones, but gradually and never all at once.
Q 19What is the name for all the leaves on a tree taken together?
Foliage
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.
Q 20What do leaves take in from the air to make food?
Carbon dioxide
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.
Q 24Which little creatures usually pollinate pumpkin flowers?
Bees
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.
Q 25Which part of a pumpkin do people roast to make a crunchy snack?
The seeds
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.
Q 26What is a carved pumpkin with a face called?
A jack-o'-lantern
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.
Q 27Before pumpkins, what vegetable did people in Ireland carve into lanterns?
Turnips
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.
Q 28The carved pumpkin lantern is linked to an Irish legend about a man called what?
Stingy Jack
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.
Q 29Which part of a pumpkin plant grows into the pumpkin itself?
The flower
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.
Q 30On what date is Halloween?
October 31
Halloween is October 31, the evening before All Hallows' Day (All Saints' Day) on November 1; the name is short for All Hallows' Eve.