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50 free Children's Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Almost every country has a Children's Day, and almost none of them agree on when it is. The UN's observance, India's tribute to its first prime minister, Japan's Kodomo no Hi and the 1 June date kept across the former communist world all have their own origin stories, and the customs run from streamers and rice cakes to presidents handing their desks to schoolchildren. These 50 questions cover the dates and the reasons behind them, the people who pushed children's rights onto the world's agenda, the treaties and declarations that followed, and the local traditions that make each country's celebration its own. Use it for a classroom quiz around Children's Day, a family round, or just to find out which country once asked every driver to switch their headlights on for the day.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which affectionate title did Indian children give their first prime minister, whose birthday became Children's Day?
Chacha (Uncle)
Chacha (Uncle) Nehru's birthday was first marked as Children's Day in 1954 and made official by a government edict in 1957.
Q 02Japan's Children's Day windsocks are shaped like which fish, said to become a dragon by swimming upstream?
Carp
Carp streamers date from the Edo period, when samurai households merged their crested banners into the first koinobori in what is now Tokyo.
Q 03The UN adopted its 1959 Declaration and 1989 Convention on children's rights on which date, now World Children's Day?
20 November
The 1954 UN resolution that created Universal Children's Day left each country to pick its own date; 20 November stuck because the 1959 Declaration and the 1989 Convention were both adopted on it.
Q 04Which country's Día del Niño, on 30 April, has radio and TV hosts bring their children onto their shows?
Mexico
Mexico fixed 30 April in the 1920s under President Álvaro Obregón, steering clear of 1 May's Labour Day and Cinco de Mayo, while the UN's own date clashes with Revolution Day.
Q 05Children's Day began in the 1850s as 'Rose Day' at Charles Leonard's Universalist church in Chelsea, in which US state?
Massachusetts
Massachusetts still issues an annual proclamation for the second Sunday in June, and the Universalist Convention of 1867 urged every church to set aside one Sunday a year for children.
Q 06Eglantyne Jebb, who drafted the 1924 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, had founded which charity in 1919?
Save the Children
Save the Children was launched in London in 1919 to feed children in Germany and Austria-Hungary still suffering under the Allied blockade after the Armistice.
Q 07Norway's Children's Day on 17 May shares its date with which national celebration, known for children's parades?
Constitution Day
Constitution Day parades of schoolchildren double as Norway's Children's Day, a deliberate pairing that puts children at the centre of the national day.
Q 08Kashiwa mochi eaten on Japan's Children's Day comes wrapped in which tree's leaf, which stays on until new leaves grow?
Oak
Oak leaves are not eaten, unlike the cherry leaf on sakura mochi; the tree's habit of keeping old leaves until new ones appear makes it a charm for prosperity of offspring.
Q 09Since 1950, Children's Day on 1 June has been kept mainly by countries that belonged to which Cold War grouping?
The Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc date was set in 1949 by the Women's International Democratic Federation, and it survives from Russia and Poland to China, Cuba and Vietnam.
Q 10Which country, the first to make Children's Day a holiday, lets children sit in for its president and ministers?
Turkey
Turkey's children send representatives into the offices of the president, cabinet ministers, governors and mayors every 23 April, and since 1979 the festival has flown in children from abroad.
Q 11Which body endorsed the 1924 Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child as its World Child Welfare Charter?
The League of Nations
The League of Nations made it the first human rights document approved by any intergovernmental institution, and heads of government pledged to write its principles into domestic law.
Q 12Which South Asian product does the child-labour-free label founded by 2014 Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi certify?
Rugs
Rugs carried the label first as Rugmark, Kailash Satyarthi's scheme that became GoodWeave in 2009 and was the first voluntary certification of child-labour-free carpets.
Q 13The UN dubbed 12 July 2013 'Malala Day' when Malala Yousafzai addressed it on which birthday?
Her 16th
Q 21Japan's 1948 holiday law, which turned Boys' Day into Children's Day, also says the day expresses gratitude toward whom?
Mothers
Mothers get the thanks in the law's wording, while the old Boys' Day customs of armour displays, samurai dolls and streamers were opened to girls as well.
Q 22Kintarō dolls shown on Japan's Children's Day honour a folk hero said to have beaten which animals at sumo as a boy?
Bears
Bears lost to the 'Golden Boy', thought to be based on a real Heian-period retainer, Sakata Kintoki; families decorate a newborn boy's room with his dolls so he grows up strong.
Q 23Which flower, prized by samurai for its sword-shaped leaves, goes into the bathwater on Japan's Children's Day?
Iris
Her 16th birthday speech called for worldwide access to education; two years later, on her 18th, she opened a school for Syrian refugees in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley.
Q 14Congo, Gabon, Chad and the Central African Republic mark Children's Day on which date, already a major Christian feast?
25 December
25 December doubles as Children's Day across much of Central Africa, while Eritrea keeps 8 December and Tunisia has marked 11 January since 1995.
Q 15Japanese families displaying hina dolls for Girls' Day traditionally pack them away fast to spare a daughter which fate?
A late marriage
A late marriage is the superstition for dolls left out past the day after Hinamatsuri, the 3 March Doll Festival that is the girls' counterpart to Children's Day.
Q 16Which country's Children's Day, on the second Saturday of January, lets children sit at the prime minister's desk?
Thailand
Thailand's 'Wan Dek', a holiday since 1955, comes with a theme and slogan from the prime minister, and Government House, Parliament and military bases open their doors to families.
Q 17The World Day Against Child Labour, marked every 12 June since 2002, was launched by which UN agency?
The ILO
The ILO (International Labour Organization) created the day to keep child labour in view; Kailash Satyarthi's 1998 Global March across 103 countries and 80,000 km had pressed it for a treaty on the worst forms of child labour.
Q 18Argentina moved its Children's Day from the second to the third Sunday of August in 2013 to stop it clashing with what?
Primary elections
Primary elections fall on the second Sunday of August, so the toy-giving day shifted a week; neighbouring Chile still keeps the older second-Sunday date.
Q 19The UK holds its National Children's Day in summer rather than on the UN's date, for what stated reason?
So they can be outdoors
So they can be outdoors on their own day, the UK skips the UN's autumn date even though a UK Children's Day was set up under the 1954 UN resolution.
Q 20Which country's 2025 presidential decree moved its Children's Day from 1 June to the UN's World Children's Day date?
Ukraine
Ukraine had kept the Soviet-era 1 June 'Day of Children's Protection' under a 1998 decree before switching to the UN's autumn date from 2025.
Iris leaves shaped like blades, and a name, shōbu, that sounds like 'valuing military affairs', made it the samurai's plant; people also steep it in sake and tuck it into pillows.
Q 24Brazil's Dia das Crianças on 12 October shares its date with the feast of which patron saint of the country?
Our Lady of Aparecida
Our Lady of Aparecida's feast is the patron-saint holiday that gives 12 October its day off, and Brazilian children mark it by receiving presents from parents and relatives.
Q 25Families in the former East Germany mostly kept Children's Day on 1 June rather than which West German date?
20 September
20 September's Weltkindertag became official for all Germany in 1990, yet most eastern families still mark the GDR's 1 June Kindertag; Thuringia made 20 September a state holiday in 2019.
Q 26Which West African country's Children's Day, a 27 May school holiday since 1964, has selected schools parade?
Nigeria
Nigeria is so large that only a few selected schools get to parade; other pupils spend the day on outings or doing the jobs adults normally do.
Q 27New Zealand's Children's Day, on the first Sunday in March, honours children with which Māori word for 'treasure'?
Taonga
Taonga is the word, and in 2012 the day's theme turned to peace and aroha, the Māori word for love.
Q 28In April 1919, Eglantyne Jebb was arrested in Trafalgar Square for distributing leaflets carrying what?
Famine photographs
Famine photographs of starving children in Central Europe, taken by photographers she had sent out, filled the leaflets; weeks later her new children's fund launched at the Royal Albert Hall and quickly raised a large sum.
Q 29The UN's 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child, doubling Eglantyne Jebb's 1924 list, set out how many principles?
Ten
Ten principles, up from the five points Jebb published in 1923 and the seven of a 1948 UN version, passed unanimously, with a resolution proposed by Afghanistan urging governments to honour them.
Q 30The UN's Day of the Girl Child, first held in 2012, grew from which NGO's 'Because I Am a Girl' campaign?
Plan International
Plan International took the idea to the Canadian government, whose status-of-women minister Rona Ambrose sponsored the UN resolution that passed in late 2011.