Fun riddles for kindergartens and nursery schools. Easy questions for young children.

Toilet Riddles

Don't look at toilet riddles while you're eating.

Little kids—especially boys—often love talking about the bathroom and poop, right? This riddle set, all about toilets, seems like it would be a big hit with those kids.

It’s trickier than you might expect, but it could also help them learn the names of things in the bathroom.

Plus, if you teach them not to talk about the toilet during meals, for example, it can become a lesson in manners.

Using topics children are interested in to get them thinking in different ways boosts their motivation to learn and really works.

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Hirakawa Masako (Bōkarisuto: Sakata Mizumako)

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Riddles about vehicles

Riddles Quiz of Vehicles Only

A story about rankings of boys’ future dreams.

Although top spots have been taken by athletes and YouTubers, Shinkansen drivers and bus drivers are still very popular.

The memories of your first ride on a bullet train or an airplane really stick with you, don’t they? A “vehicle quiz” would surely delight kids! “What vehicle makes the sound double?” → The answer is “autobike” (motorcycle) — it’s a wordplay in Japanese where the sound becomes “auto-bai” (double).

If you have a vehicle picture book, you could show photos or drawings bit by bit and ask, “What vehicle is this?” to spark their imagination.

Even just lining up toy cars and saying their names to each other could make for a fun time.

Animal riddles

[Daiei] VTuber Mokkun: Can You Solve These Riddles? Part 2

Therapies that heal mental illnesses by interacting with animals—such as dolphin therapy and horse therapy—have gradually become more widely known.

I think many households keep companion animals because they are said to be good for children’s emotional education.

How about spending a fun moment with animal riddles that all kids love? “What animal is hiding in the refrigerator?” → The answer is “elephant.” That’s because the Japanese word for refrigerator, reizouko, contains the sound “zou,” which means “elephant.” Some companies, like Yahoo! Kids and Daiei, also offer riddles for children.

Please use them as a reference!

Spring Riddles

Riddles and quizzes about spring

One way to memorize English words is through associative memory.

For example, you organize your memory by category—things related to school like teacher, student, classroom, and so on.

This method is considered much more efficient than memorizing words at random.

How about trying some “spring riddles” to build your spring-related vocabulary? It can be a fun quiz and also serve as educational play to expand children’s vocabulary—two birds with one stone.

For instance: “What chair starts calling in spring?” → The answer is “uguisu” (Japanese bush warbler), a pun in Japanese.

While enjoying wordplay, it could also be fun to make plans for the coming spring with prompts like “What do you want to eat in spring?” and “What flowers do you want to see in spring?”

A word riddle: It’s a “kai,” but what kind of “kai”?

Riddle: A new sensation!! A riddle where “kai” is still “kai.”

I once saw a headline on a flyer for an early childhood education center that said something like, “We’ll grow your child’s vocabulary!” The idea is probably that expanding a child’s vocabulary will broaden their interests too.

In daycare centers and kindergartens, they often play games or do exercises to build vocabulary.

For example, when prompted, “Say words that start with ‘ai’,” children freely answer things like “aisatsu (greeting),” “idol,” and “ice.” You could adapt this format to make riddles, too.

For instance: “Which ‘kai’ lives in the deepest places?” Answer: “shinkai (the deep sea).” Please come up with lots of riddles that will make children’s hearts race with excitement!

Riddles for 5-year-olds

Let's try some riddles for five-year-olds that you can use during a bus activity.

These are riddles for five-year-olds.

By age five, many children have larger vocabularies and can hold proper conversations.

As their social skills develop and they learn to cooperate with friends, it might be helpful to create time for teams to think of answers together and to make sure participation doesn’t center on just one child by encouraging different children to answer.

The riddles shouldn’t be instantly obvious; it could be good to include some that are a bit more challenging as well.

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Hirakawa Masako (Bōkarisuto: Sakata Mizumako)

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Brain-training riddle

[10 Riddles] Brain-Training Riddles Easy for Adults and Kids to Enjoy | Dementia Prevention for Seniors

Riddles aren’t just for children—older adults enjoy them too as a way to help prevent cognitive decline.

If there are chances for kids to interact with seniors at kindergarten or nursery events, a riddle face-off would be great.

You can probably find just-right riddles online or in videos that both children and seniors can answer.

It also sounds fun to create your own riddles themed around local history or festivals.

When people smile, they naturally open up to each other, so connecting through riddles is highly recommended.