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116 free Fall Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 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 116 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is another name for the season called fall?
Autumn
North Americans say fall; most other English speakers say autumn.
Q 02Fall comes between which two seasons?
Summer and winter
Days get shorter and nights get longer as the season goes on.
Q 03In which month does fall begin in the Northern Hemisphere?
September
Fall begins in September in the Northern Hemisphere: forecasters start it on September 1, and the astronomical season starts at the equinox around September 22. South of the equator it begins in March.
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
This carries on until the shortest day, the winter solstice in December.
Q 06Which US holiday is often treated as the informal end of summer and start of fall?
Labor Day
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is widely treated as the unofficial end of summer in the United States, the weekend when pools close and school is back.
Q 07The season's other name comes from which old language?
Latin
Autumn comes from the Latin word autumnus, which reached English through Old French in the 1300s; some scholars think the Latin word itself was borrowed from Etruscan.
Q 08What is the day in early fall when day and night are about the same length called?
The equinox
The equinox, from Latin for '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
On the equinox the Sun rises due east and sets due west everywhere on Earth; after the September equinox 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
The September equinox starts spring in the Southern Hemisphere, so Australia and South Africa warm up while the north cools down; the same moment marks two different seasons.
Q 11Which colours do leaves turn in the fall?
Yellow, orange, red and brown
Leaves turn yellow, orange, red and brown as their green fades in fall; New England's display is so famous that millions of visitors come to see it every October.
Q 12What is the green stuff in leaves called?
Chlorophyll
It sits inside tiny parts of the leaf called chloroplasts.
Q 13Why do leaves lose their summer colour in the fall?
Their green pigment breaks down
Red colours come from new pigments called anthocyanins.
Q 21What colour are most pumpkins?
Orange
Most pumpkins are orange because their skin is full of carotene, the same pigment that colours carrots; white, green and blue-grey pumpkins exist too.
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 23How much did the record-setting heaviest pumpkin of 2023 weigh?
About 2,749 pounds
About 2,749 pounds, or 1,246.9 kg, is the record set in October 2023, more than a small car.
Q 14Where do the yellow colours in fall leaves come from?
Pigments hidden in the leaf all summer
The yellows come from carotenoid pigments hidden in the leaf all summer; they are masked by green chlorophyll until it breaks down in fall.
Q 15What does the green pigment in a leaf do for the plant?
Catches sunlight to make food
Chlorophyll 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 name for tourists who travel to look at colourful fall leaves?
Leaf peepers
Leaf peepers is the nickname for tourists who travel to see fall colours; leaf-peeping season is big business for New England and eastern Canada every October.
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
Evergreens do drop leaves, just not all at once.
Q 19What is the name for all the leaves on a tree taken together?
Foliage
Foliage means all the leaves of a plant or tree taken together; it comes from the Latin folium, meaning leaf, which is why we talk about autumn foliage.
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 and sunlight, to make sugar, giving oxygen back out.
Q 24Which little creatures usually pollinate pumpkin flowers?
Bees
Bees do the job: squash bees and honeybees carry pollen from the male flowers to the female ones, and a pumpkin plant grows both kinds of flower.
Q 25What is inside a pumpkin's thick shell?
Seeds and pulp
Inside the shell a pumpkin is full of seeds and stringy pulp; the seeds can be roasted and eaten, and one pumpkin can hold hundreds of them.
Q 26What is a carved pumpkin with a face called?
A jack-o'-lantern
A carved pumpkin with a face is a jack-o'-lantern; lit by a candle inside, it is set out as a Halloween decoration, a custom that came to America with Irish immigrants.
Q 27Before pumpkins, what vegetable did people in Ireland carve into lanterns?
Turnips
In Ireland people hollowed out turnips into lanterns; immigrants brought the custom to America, where the native pumpkin was bigger and easier to carve.
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 and was doomed to roam the Earth with only a burning coal inside a hollowed turnip to light his way.
Q 29Which part of a pumpkin plant grows into the pumpkin itself?
The flower
A pumpkin grows from the base of a female flower: after bees pollinate it, the swollen part behind the petals grows into the fruit.
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.