KS2 Trivia
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50 free KS2 trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Key Stage 2 is when school starts to feel like real knowledge: the water cycle, simple circuits, the rocks under your feet, the lines drawn on a globe, and the long parade of Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Tudors that fills the classroom history wall. Most adults remember a surprising amount of it, and find a surprising number of gaps. These 50 questions follow the English KS2 curriculum for Years 3 to 6. The science strand covers changes of state, forces, light, the body and living things; geography takes in the lines on a globe, oceans, mountains and how the Earth is built; history runs from the Stone Age through ancient Egypt and Greece to the Tudors; and the rest mixes shapes, number facts, grammar terms and British wildlife. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation a ten-year-old can read aloud. Use it for a class quiz, a family round at the kitchen table, or to find out whether you can still beat a Year 6 pupil.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Ice Age animal did Stone Age people hunt for meat and then use its bones to build the frames of huts?
Woolly mammoth
The woolly mammoth, a hairy relative of today's elephants, lived alongside early humans, who hunted it for meat and carved its bones and tusks into tools and art as well as building with them.
Q 02Which volcano near Naples erupted in AD 79 and buried the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum?
Vesuvius
Vesuvius wiped out Pompeii, Herculaneum and several smaller settlements, and the deep ash preserved streets, houses and even bread so well that they can be visited today.
Q 03Which boy pharaoh's treasure-filled tomb did Howard Carter uncover in the Valley of the Kings in 1922?
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun's tomb was found in 1922 by a team led by Howard Carter and paid for by Lord Carnarvon, and although robbers had got in long ago, it still held much of its treasure and the king's undisturbed mummy.
Q 04Which metal, a mix of copper and a little tin, names the age that followed the Stone Age in Britain?
Bronze
Bronze is typically about 88% copper with tin making up most of the rest, and the mixture is much harder than pure copper, so it made far better tools and weapons than stone.
Q 05Which ingredient makes bread dough rise by feeding on its sugars and giving off carbon dioxide gas?
Yeast
Yeast is a tiny single-celled fungus, and the gas it breathes out gets trapped as bubbles that make a loaf light and airy instead of a hard flat brick.
Q 06Which tree drops paired winged seeds that twirl to the ground like little helicopters each autumn?
Sycamore
The sycamore's seeds are called samaras, and their single wing makes them spin as they fall so the wind carries them clear of the parent tree's shade.
Q 07Which small bird, voted Britain's national bird in a 2015 poll, keeps singing right through the winter?
Robin
The robin took 34% of the vote, and both males and females sing in winter because each one holds its own territory through the cold months.
Q 08Wednesday takes its name from which Anglo-Saxon god?
Woden
Woden's name sits inside the Old English word Wodnesdaeg, 'day of Woden', a reminder that the Anglo-Saxons worshipped their own gods before they became Christians.
Q 09Which Roman arena, opened in AD 80, drew huge crowds to gladiator fights and wild animal hunts?
Colosseum
The Colosseum was begun by the emperor Vespasian and opened by his son Titus, and ancient writers say that in its early years it was even flooded to stage mock sea battles.
Q 10In the water cycle, which stage turns water vapour back into the tiny droplets that make up clouds?
Condensation
Condensation happens when rising water vapour cools, and the very same change makes the fog that hangs near the ground on a cold morning.
Q 11Which force slows a sledge sliding over gravel and makes your hands warm when you rub them together?
Friction
Friction resists two surfaces sliding past each other and turns movement into heat, which is how rubbing two sticks together can start a fire.
Q 12What word describes a material, such as wood or metal, that light cannot pass through, so it casts a shadow?
Opaque
An opaque object lets no light through: it absorbs or reflects all the light that hits it, which is why its shadow is dark and has the same outline as the object.
Q 13Which muscular tube, about 25 cm long in adults, carries swallowed food from the throat down to the stomach?
Oesophagus
Q 21Which line of zero longitude, running through Greenwich in London, did an 1884 international conference choose as the world's standard?
Prime Meridian
The Prime Meridian at Greenwich is marked by a metal strip, but satellite navigation shows the true zero line now runs about 102 metres east of it; France and Brazil abstained from the 1884 vote that chose it.
Q 22Which mountain range, the highest on Earth, separates the plains of India from the Tibetan Plateau?
Himalayas
The Himalayas hold Mount Everest, and they are still rising slowly because the plate carrying India keeps pushing north into the rest of Asia.
Q 23Which layer of the Earth, made of hot rock, lies between the thin crust and the outer core?
Mantle
The oesophagus does more than let food drop: rings of muscle squeeze in waves, called peristalsis, to push each mouthful down behind the windpipe and into the stomach.
Q 14Which metal is pulled towards a magnet, unlike copper and aluminium, which is why magnets cling to a steel fridge door?
Iron
Iron, nickel and cobalt are the everyday metals a magnet pulls on, and a steel door holds a magnet only because steel is mostly iron.
Q 15Which naturalist spent five years sailing on HMS Beagle before publishing his theory of evolution in 1859?
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species argued that living things slowly change over many generations, an idea he had sat on for about twenty years.
Q 16Which rock type, including sandstone and limestone, forms as layers of sand, mud or shells pile up over ages?
Sedimentary
Sedimentary rock builds up in layers called strata, and because the layers bury dead plants and animals gently, it is the kind of rock where fossils are found.
Q 17Which animal group, including frogs, toads and newts, begins life in water with gills and moves onto land as adults?
Amphibians
Amphibians have thin, damp skin that lets water and air soak straight through, which is why polluted ponds hit them first and many kinds are now in decline.
Q 18Which food group, found in bread, rice, pasta and potatoes, is the body's main everyday supply of energy?
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates in those foods are mostly starch, which the body breaks down into sugar, and each gram gives about four kilocalories of energy.
Q 19Which British garden mammal sleeps through the winter?
Hedgehog
The hedgehog has thousands of spines to hide behind when it curls up, and it hibernates because the beetles and worms it eats grow scarce in the cold; one that beds down too thin may starve before spring.
Q 20Which imaginary line at 0 degrees latitude circles the Earth halfway between the North and South Poles?
Equator
The Equator is roughly 25,000 miles around, and countries it crosses, such as Kenya and Ecuador, stay warm all year because the midday Sun is always high overhead.
The mantle makes up most of the Earth's volume, and although it is solid rock it creeps very slowly over millions of years, stirring like thick porridge on a stove.
Q 24On a compass rose, which of the eight main points lies directly opposite south-east?
North-west
North-west sits halfway between north and west, and because winds are named for where they come from, a north-westerly wind blows towards the south-east.
Q 25What name is given to the place where a river begins, often a spring or a boggy patch high in the hills?
Source
The source is where rainwater, meltwater or spring water first gathers into a steady flow, and even the Thames starts as a trickle you could step across.
Q 26What are the giant slabs of the Earth's outer shell called, whose slow movement causes earthquakes and builds mountains?
Tectonic plates
Tectonic plates meet at boundaries where earthquakes and volcanoes cluster, and brand-new crust is made where two plates pull apart along ridges under the sea.
Q 27Which ocean, the third largest, has Africa on its west side, Australia to the east and Asia to the north?
Indian
The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the five oceans, and its monsoon winds swap direction with the seasons, which traders once relied on to sail out and back again.
Q 28Which Orkney village from the Stone Age, hidden under sand until a storm exposed it, still has stone beds and dressers?
Skara Brae
Skara Brae was lived in from about 3180 BC to 2500 BC, and its stone houses were set into mounds of midden, old household rubbish, which held the walls steady and kept out Orkney's cold.
Q 29Which Roman general sailed to Britain in late summer 55 BC, almost a hundred years before the Romans conquered it?
Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar came back with a bigger army the next year but still left without holding any land, and the real invasion under Claudius waited until AD 43.
Q 30The Vikings who raided and then settled in Britain from the 790s sailed from which three modern countries?
Norway, Sweden and Denmark
Norway, Sweden and Denmark made up the Viking homelands, and the Danes settled so much of eastern England that the region became known as the Danelaw.