10 Fun Riddles For Kids
Riddles can be a lot of fun. They can really help to get you thinking, and it is something the whole family can get involved with. Riddles are great for kids because they can also be very educational, while they can also help to train kids to think outside of the box.
You can also have a lot of fun making up your own riddles and challenging other people to try and solve them. If you can’t think up any riddles yourself then that’s okay because you will find plenty online. We’ve suggested 10 of the most fun riddles for kids to help you get started.
1. Your Name
Q: What is yours, but other people use it a lot more than you do? A: Your Name.
Our names might belong to us, but we tend not to use them very often. We only usually use them when introducing ourselves, and once is usually all it takes for each person that we meet. It is also true that other people will use our names a lot more than we do. If friends or family want to get your attention, for example, they will need to use your name to do so. They might use it several times a day, whereas you might only use it once a week, or even rarer.
2. Blue House
Q: A blue man lives in a blue, one-story house. He has a blue sofa, a blue refrigerator, a blue computer, a blue table, and a blue bed. What color are the stairs? A: There are no stairs, the house has only one story.
This one can have people slapping their foreheads because the answer was given right at the beginning of the riddle. It is often the case with riddles that you will find that the answer is already there. It pays to pay attention, and it is a good way of training kids to consider what people are telling them.
3. Night Reading
Q: A woman is sitting at home at night, with no lights on at all, not even a candle, and she is reading a book. How can she read a book in the dark? A: She is reading braille.
For those that are not aware, braille is a form of writing that has been developed for blind people. It uses raised bumps in paper that the reader can touch with their fingers, letting their fingers do the reading for them. The riddle can get kids thinking that there can be different contexts to any question. It can also be educational in that it encourages them to learn about braille.
4. Once in a Minute
Q: What occurs one time in a minute, twice in a moment, but not even a single time in a thousand years? A: The letter M.
This riddle will have people thinking about time, understandably. How can it be possible for anything to occur twice in a minute but never over a longer period of time? This is a riddle that can help to get kids thinking outside of the box. It is deliberately misleading in encouraging us to think that the riddle is about time, where is it is not about time at all. Instead, it is about the words and letters that are right in front of them.
5. Bricks vs. Feathers
Q: Which weighs the most, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? A: Neither. They both weigh a ton!
This is another riddle in which the answer is clearly given within, yet still easy to miss. A lot of kids, and even some adults, will get it wrong because, after all, a brick does weight a lot more than a feather. Of course, there would need to be a lot of feathers for them to weigh a ton and it would take a lot fewer bricks than feathers to weigh a ton. If they weigh a ton each, however, then they weigh the same.
6. Window
Q: What allows you to see right through a brick wall? A: A window.
The question might originally have you thinking of an invention that gives us the ability of x-ray vision, although there is no such thing aside from a window. It’s as though the answer is so obvious that it makes it easy to overlook. While we are unable to see through walls visually (assuming there is no window), there are still other ways we can see what is on the other side. For example, some high tech thermal cameras will be able to give us some information about what is behind a wall.
7. Hands on a Clock
Q: What has hands but is not able to clap? A: A clock.
This is yet another riddle that is misleading to begin with. The question clearly seems to suggest that the hands in question are the type we have at the end of our arms. However, it turns out to be a completely different type of hand. This can be a fun riddle for a kid because it can get them thinking about how words can have different meanings. It might also encourage them to look around them for clues as to what the answer to the riddle might be.
8. Breaking Eggs
Q: What must you break before it can be used? A: Eggs.
It reminds us of the old saying To make an omelet you must first break some eggs. To begin with, it may sound counterintuitive that something will need to be broken in order to use it, but eggs are a fine example of just that. The riddle can also get kids thinking of other things that need to be broken in order for them to be useful. Another example is with glowsticks that need to be snapped so the chemical reactions that cause them to glow can take place.
9. Plane Crash
Q: If a plane crashes in the Swiss Alps on the border between Switzerland and France, where are the survivors buried? A: We don’t bury the survivors, because they survived.
Yet another riddle when the answer is quite clearly in the question, but still easy to miss. It seems so easy once you know the answer, yet most people, kids and adults, will miss it to begin with. Riddles like this one can be beneficial for children because it will help them to consider questions and problems from different angles. It can help to train their minds in a way that can help them to solve problems for themselves when they are adults.
10. Friday the Horse
Q: A man rode into the town on Friday. He only stayed for two days, and he left on Friday. How did he manage that? A: His horse’s name was Friday.
At first, this riddle has you thinking that the man arrived on the day Friday, which may well have been the case, but it’s still beside the point. It’s when you know that it is another 7 days until it is Friday again, so two days doesn’t add up, that you know something is not right. The clue, albeit a subtle one, is that he rode into town rather than walking or by car. It is also not unusual for people or animals to be named Friday, and Robinson Crusoe’s Friday is perhaps the most famous of them all.
