Forty mixed questions for a quiz with the whole family, easy enough for a seven-year-old and hard enough for Dad to get wrong, with answers that appear when you tap. And ten family questions at the end, about Grandma's cat and the year Dad was born, which are the ones everyone remembers.
A Friday quiz is the easiest family tradition to start: it costs nothing, it takes half an hour and everyone wants to win. Here are forty questions to get you going, sorted so that hard and easy are mixed. The game is team against team, mixed ages, and whoever wins gets to read the questions next Friday.
Friday at six in a flat in Hammarby sjöstad. The tacos are eaten, the seven-year-old and the eleven-year-old have each been put in a team with a parent, and Mum has the sheet with the answers. The first question is about the Vasa, and the seven-year-old knows, because the class went there in October. Dad guessed the 1700s. That is exactly how it should be.
How to play
- Two teams, mixed ages. Children answer first in each team.
- Ten questions per round, three rounds, a popcorn break in between.
- Passing is allowed, the question goes to the other team.
- The last round is the family questions. Whoever writes them cannot be in a team.
- One correct answer is one point. No minus points for wrong answers, so the five-year-old dares to guess.
Forty questions
- In which year did the warship Vasa sink?
Show the answer
1628, on her maiden voyage in Stockholm.
- How many letters are there in the Swedish alphabet?
Show the answer
29.
- What is Sweden's largest lake?
Show the answer
Vänern.
- What is the capital of Finland?
Show the answer
Helsinki.
- How many players does a football team have on the pitch?
Show the answer
Eleven.
- Which planet is the largest in our solar system?
Show the answer
Jupiter.
- Who wrote Pippi Longstocking?
Show the answer
Astrid Lindgren.
- What is Sweden's highest mountain?
Show the answer
Kebnekaise.
- How many minutes are there in a day?
Show the answer
1,440.
- Which animal is the largest in the world?
Show the answer
The blue whale.
- Which country has the most inhabitants?
Show the answer
India.
- How many hearts does an octopus have?
Show the answer
Three.
- What is the name of Moomintroll's mother?
Show the answer
Moominmamma.
- What is the longest river in the world, according to most people?
Show the answer
The Nile.
- At how many degrees does water freeze?
Show the answer
Zero.
- In which year did people first land on the moon?
Show the answer
1969.
- What are the names of Harry Potter's best friends?
Show the answer
Ron and Hermione.
- How many legs does a spider have?
Show the answer
Eight.
- Which city is the Turning Torso in?
Show the answer
Malmö.
- What do you call a group of fish swimming together?
Show the answer
A shoal.
- How many weeks are there in a year?
Show the answer
52.
- Who painted the Mona Lisa?
Show the answer
Leonardo da Vinci.
- What is the name of Bamse's tortoise friend?
Show the answer
Skalman.
- How many moons does the Earth have?
Show the answer
One.
- What is the body's largest organ?
Show the answer
The skin.
- What colour do you get from red and yellow?
Show the answer
Orange.
- What is the largest ocean in the world?
Show the answer
The Pacific Ocean.
- How many teeth does an adult have?
Show the answer
32.
- What date is Sweden's National Day?
Show the answer
6 June.
- Which animal is the fastest on land?
Show the answer
The cheetah.
- What is seven times nine?
Show the answer
63.
- What is Sweden's second largest city?
Show the answer
Gothenburg.
- In which year did the Second World War end?
Show the answer
1945.
- What is the name of Pettson's cat?
Show the answer
Findus.
- How many rings are there in the Olympic symbol?
Show the answer
Five.
- What is the capital of Norway?
Show the answer
Oslo.
- How many zeros are there in a billion?
Show the answer
Nine.
- What is the smallest bird?
Show the answer
The hummingbird.
- What is it called when water turns into steam?
Show the answer
Evaporation, or boiling.
- Which instrument has 88 keys?
Show the answer
The piano.
Ten questions about yourselves
Write the answers on a sheet beforehand. These are the questions the children talk about on Monday.
- What is Grandma's cat called?
- Which year was Dad born?
- What was Mum's first job?
- Where did Mum and Dad meet?
- What was the name of big sister's first preschool?
- What is Grandpa's favourite food?
- How many cousins do we have altogether?
- What is the name of the street where Grandma lived as a child?
- Which song did Mum and Dad have their first dance to?
- What was the first word little brother said?
More questions are in Quiz questions for kids, and riddles for the whole family in Riddles that work for both adults and children.
Which questions suit which age?
The forty questions are deliberately mixed, but when you make your own it helps to know what children of different ages can answer. Roughly like this:
| Age | Topics that work | Topics that don't work yet |
|---|---|---|
| 5 to 6 | Animals, colours, storybook characters, the family, things at home, seasons | Years, capital cities, counting past ten |
| 7 to 9 | Sweden, the Nordic countries, planets, the body, simple sums, books they have read | World wars, chemistry, words like century and prime number |
| 10 to 12 | The world, history, science, music, sport | Almost nothing. This is when they start beating their parents |
| Adults | All of the above, plus what the children know and they have forgotten | Bamse's tortoise, Pettson's cat, Moomintroll's mother |
Teams, points and why the children go first
The rule that children answer first in each team is the most important one in the whole game. Without it, the adults take over for the first twenty questions and the children stop listening. With it, the seven-year-old gets a go at every question, and the adults become the reserve team. If you make teams of three, let the youngest be team captain and say the answer out loud, even when it was big sister who knew. In her head, the captain is the one who gets the point.
The points need no scoreboard. Count in your head or put a pebble in a bowl for each correct answer. The winning team chooses dessert, and the losing team clears the table. It is a prize everyone understands, and it evens out over the term.
Three variations for when Friday night has become too predictable
- In the car. Whoever is in the front reads, the back seat answers. No teams, just questions one after another until someone falls asleep or you arrive at Grandma's.
- At the family dinner. The family questions work best when Grandma is at the table and can correct Dad about the street she lived on. Let the youngest read the questions, so she is right in the middle of the conversation.
- As a tipspromenad (a Swedish quiz walk). Twelve of the questions on separate sheets of paper with three answer options, taped up along a route through the flat or the park. Our Tipspromenad for kids has the answer sheet if you would rather not write your own.
How to make the quiz a tradition that lasts
What makes the Friday quiz survive the autumn is not the questions but that it happens at the same time every week and that the children have a role. A child who gets to be quizmaster every fourth Friday, write ten questions of their own on a sheet and stand up to read them, will remind you about it on Thursday. Change the theme now and then: one Friday only animals, one only the family, one where every question is about what you did that week. And keep a notebook where you write down the questions that got the biggest laughs. In a year it is a document you cannot throw away.
How we do it with our families
Several of our families have the nanny join the Friday quiz when she is there until seven anyway. Denise sits in the children's team with a family on Kungsholmen every other Friday, and she does not pretend not to know the answer to the Vasa question. The children know, and that is what makes it fun. She has another job too: when the seven-year-old is going to be quizmaster, she helps him write ten questions in the afternoon, with the answers on the back, so he can read them himself when his parents get home. They are almost always about football and about what the family dog is called, and Dad gets the dog wrong every time, on purpose.
Would you like a nanny who comes on the same days every week, someone the children know? Book a free first meeting with the nanny in your home, and we will work out the hours with you.
Read more: Quiz questions for kids · 100 riddles for kids with answers, sorted by age · Funny jokes for kids · FAQ
Frequently asked questions
How do you make a quiz fair between children and adults?
Mixed teams, and the questions asked in turn so that each team gets both easy and hard ones. Or: the children answer first, and the adults may only answer if the children cannot. Then the children almost always win, and the adults get to feel useful on the hard ones. Also give the seven-year-old a question of their own each round that only they may answer.
How many questions suit a Friday evening?
Thirty to forty, in three rounds with a break. A round of ten questions takes about ten minutes if nobody gets stuck, so the whole evening lands at half an hour to forty minutes. Put the family questions last, they are the most fun and everyone wants to stay for them. If the children are under seven, do two rounds and stop while they still want more.
What do you do about the one who always wins?
Make them quizmaster next time. It is an honour and it evens things out. The quizmaster cannot be in a team, but gets to decide which questions are asked and in what order. A twelve-year-old who has been asked to write ten questions for the parents is busy all week, and the questions are often harder than the ones you found yourselves.
Are phones allowed?
No. But anyone who does not know may say pass, and the question moves on to the next team. That gives more laughs than more correct answers. The exception is the quizmaster, who may have the answers on a phone or a sheet. If you still want a technical touch: let a child be timekeeper with an egg timer, twenty seconds per question.
How do you make your own questions that suit your family?
Start from what you have done together: the trip last summer, the book you are reading aloud, the animal at preschool. Write questions where the answer is something the child has experienced themselves, so even a five-year-old gets it right. Mix in ten questions about the relatives: Grandma's cat, the year Dad was born. They become the questions the children talk about on Monday.