Counting, numbers, and shapes
First-grade math lives inside twenty for adding and inside a hundred for counting, and shapes are named rather than measured. Every question here can be worked out on fingers, which is exactly what a six-year-old should be doing.
Q1.What is 2 plus 3?Tap to reveal
Answer: 5
You can check it on one hand, which is why fives and tens are the easiest numbers to learn first.
Q2.What number comes after 9?Tap to reveal
Answer: 10
Ten is where we start again with a new column, and that idea is the whole reason our number system works.
Q3.How many sides does a square have?Tap to reveal
Answer: Four
All four sides of a square are the same length. A rectangle has four sides too, but two are longer.
Q4.What is 5 minus 2?Tap to reveal
Answer: 3
Taking away is the opposite of adding, so 3 plus 2 brings you right back to 5.
Q5.How many fingers do you have on both hands together?Tap to reveal
Answer: Ten
Almost every country counts in tens, and this is the reason why.
Q6.What shape is a ball?Tap to reveal
Answer: A sphere, a round shape
A circle is flat, like a drawn ring. A sphere is round all the way around, like a ball or the Earth.
Q7.What number comes between 6 and 8?Tap to reveal
Answer: 7
Saying numbers in order is called counting on, and it is how first graders learn to add.
Q8.How many wheels does a bicycle have?Tap to reveal
Answer: Two
Bi means two. A tricycle has three wheels, because tri means three.
Q9.Which is more: 4 or 7?Tap to reveal
Answer: 7
The further along you count, the bigger the number gets.
Q10.How many corners does a triangle have?Tap to reveal
Answer: Three
A triangle always has three corners and three sides, no matter how squashed or stretched it looks.
Animal trivia for 1st graders
Animals are the surest way to keep a six-year-old in the game. These are the ones first graders usually know, with one or two that start an argument — the bat question in particular.
Q1.What sound does a cow make?Tap to reveal
Answer: Moo
Cows really do have accents. Herds in different places moo slightly differently.
Q2.What is a baby dog called?Tap to reveal
Answer: A puppy
A baby cat is a kitten and a baby horse is a foal.
Q3.Which animal has a long trunk?Tap to reveal
Answer: An elephant
An elephant uses its trunk to drink, to smell, and to pick up something as small as a single leaf.
Q4.How many legs does a spider have?Tap to reveal
Answer: Eight
Insects have six legs, which is why a spider is not an insect.
Q5.Which animal is known for hopping and carrying its baby in a pouch?Tap to reveal
Answer: A kangaroo
A newborn kangaroo is about the size of a jellybean when it climbs into the pouch.
Q6.Do fish live in water or on land?Tap to reveal
Answer: In water
Fish breathe using gills, which take oxygen out of the water itself.
Q7.Which bird cannot fly but can swim very fast?Tap to reveal
Answer: A penguin
Penguin wings work like flippers, so they fly through water instead of air.
Q8.Is a bat a bird?Tap to reveal
Answer: No, a bat is a mammal
Bats have fur and feed their babies milk. They are the only mammals that truly fly.
Q9.What do rabbits like to eat?Tap to reveal
Answer: Vegetables and grass, such as carrots and lettuce
Rabbit teeth never stop growing, so chewing tough plants keeps them worn down.
Q10.Which animal is the king of the jungle in stories?Tap to reveal
Answer: The lion
Lions do not actually live in jungles. They live on open grasslands called savannahs.
Colors, seasons, and the world around you
This round covers the everyday knowledge first grade is quietly building: what mixes to make what, which season is which, and the first facts about the sky. The color-mixing questions are the ones children most enjoy testing afterwards with paint.
Q1.What color do you get when you mix red and yellow?Tap to reveal
Answer: Orange
Red, yellow and blue are the primary colors, and every other color starts from them.
Q2.What color do you get when you mix blue and yellow?Tap to reveal
Answer: Green
This is the mix children get wrong most often, because green does not look like either of its parts.
Q3.How many colors are in a rainbow, as usually taught?Tap to reveal
Answer: Seven
Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, always in that order.
Q4.In which season do leaves fall from trees?Tap to reveal
Answer: Fall, also called autumn
The leaves change color first because the tree stops making the green stuff inside them.
Q5.What do we call frozen water that falls from the sky?Tap to reveal
Answer: Snow
Every snowflake has six sides, and no two are formed in quite the same way.
Q6.What is the big bright thing in the sky during the day?Tap to reveal
Answer: The Sun
The Sun is a star, and it looks big only because it is much closer than the others.
Q7.How many days are in a week?Tap to reveal
Answer: Seven
Five of them are usually school days and two are the weekend.
Q8.What season comes after winter?Tap to reveal
Answer: Spring
Spring is when plants start growing again and many animals have their babies.
Q9.What color is the sky on a clear day?Tap to reveal
Answer: Blue
Sunlight is made of all the colors, and air scatters the blue part of it across the whole sky.
Q10.How many months are in a year?Tap to reveal
Answer: Twelve
The word month comes from moon, because months were first counted by the moon changing shape.
Letters, words, and first reading
First grade is the year reading clicks. These questions stay on the pieces — letters, sounds, rhymes and opposites — rather than on anything that needs a book in hand.
Q1.What letter does the word apple start with?Tap to reveal
Answer: A
A is also the first letter of the alphabet.
Q2.How many letters are in the alphabet?Tap to reveal
Answer: 26
Five of them are vowels: a, e, i, o and u.
Q3.What word rhymes with dog: log or dot?Tap to reveal
Answer: Log
Rhyming words end with the same sound. Dot starts the same as dog but ends differently.
Q4.Is the letter m a vowel or a consonant?Tap to reveal
Answer: A consonant
Every letter except a, e, i, o and u is a consonant.
Q5.What is the opposite of big?Tap to reveal
Answer: Small, or little
Words that mean the opposite of each other are called opposites, or antonyms.
Q6.What letter does the word sun start with?Tap to reveal
Answer: S
The letter s makes a hissing sound, which is easy to hear at the start of a word.
Q7.What comes at the end of a sentence that tells you something?Tap to reveal
Answer: A period, a small dot
A question ends with a question mark instead.
Q8.What is the opposite of up?Tap to reveal
Answer: Down
Opposite pairs like up and down, in and out, and hot and cold are some of the first ones children learn.
Q9.Which letter comes right after B?Tap to reveal
Answer: C
Singing the alphabet song is still the fastest way to check the order.
Q10.What do we call the pictures in a storybook?Tap to reveal
Answer: Illustrations
The person who draws them is called the illustrator, and the person who writes the words is the author.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are these 1st grade trivia questions easy enough for a 6 year old?
Yes. Everything here can be answered out loud with no reading and no writing, and the math stays inside ten. The point at this age is that a child wins most of the round, so the questions are deliberately pitched so a typical first grader gets seven or eight out of ten.
How long should a trivia round be for first graders?
One round of ten questions, around five to seven minutes. Attention at six years old is short, and the best thing you can do is stop while they are still asking for another round rather than working through all forty in one sitting.
Can first graders play this without being able to read yet?
Yes. Every question is written to be read aloud by an adult and answered by speaking, and no question depends on seeing a picture or a diagram. That also makes the set work in a car, at a dinner table, or on a classroom carpet.
Can teachers use these trivia questions in a first grade classroom?
Yes, freely — for morning meeting, carpet time, indoor recess and substitute days. Each round covers one subject, so you can use just the animals set as a five-minute filler without needing the rest.
Which questions do first graders get wrong most often?
Two stand out. Mixing blue and yellow to get green catches most of them, because green looks nothing like either color that made it. And a lot of children confidently answer yes to whether a bat is a bird, which makes it a good one to end a round on.
