There’s nothing quite like a good riddle to get those brain juices flowing. Riddles are the perfect way to challenge young minds and get them thinking creatively.
Not only are riddles a lot of fun, but they can also help kids develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. So next time your little ones feel bored, bust out some of these classic riddles and watch their brains go to work!
- Which is heavier: a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers?
- I have a head and a tail, but no body. What am I?
- If you don’t keep me, I’ll break. What am I?
- There’s only one word in the dictionary that is spelled “wrong.” What is it?
- What has hands and a face but can’t hold anything or smile?
- It belongs to you, but your friends use it more. What is it?
- Kate’s mother has three children: Snap, Crackle, and ___?
- What’s easy to get into and hard to get out of?
- What gets wet while drying?
- Alive without breath, as cold as death; Never thirsty, ever drinking, all in mail, never clinking. What am I?
Answers:
A1: Neither, they are the same weight. Remind your child that some riddles use preconceptions to trip people up! Please encourage them to take a moment to think the puzzle through before answering.
A2: A coin! Please encourage your child to think about their answers out loud. This will get them to make a connection with the idiom “heads or tails.” This riddle also has multiple viable solutions, such as “a snake” or “a comet.”
A3: A promise! This one relies on a well-known idiom, “to break a promise,” so it is not so hard for children to discover on their own. It takes advantage of unique word association to create a pun.
A4: Wrong! The answer is so plain that it is easy to miss.
A5: A clock! This is the most accessible riddle of its kind. It forces your child to think about how words can have multiple meanings.
A6: Your name! This riddle is sure to crack your child up. It is hard to believe that something which is yours could be used more often by someone other than yourself and when they discover that such a thing exists—surprise!
A7: Kate! I love this riddle because it does two things we discussed in earlier puzzles. First, it uses an idiom to create a pre-conceived answer, and then it fools you by hiding the answer in plain sight.
A8: Trouble! In this kind of riddle, the listener immediately goes down a rabbit hole of searching for literal answers, but the answer is conceptual. And they may get a kick out of it—everyone knows what it is like to get into trouble. So a literal answer could be “a hole,” which I don’t disagree with.
A9: A towel! The riddle uses contradictory actions to hint at the answer and trip you up simultaneously.
A10: A fish! As you may have guessed, this one is more difficult than the rest. It comes from “The Hobbit: There and Back Again” by J.R.R. Tolkien, and it is a great way to introduce kids to similes. It also requires them to think about how some creatures can survive without what we deem essential for life, like air. This one will get them thinking! You may need to explain it a bit. A fish does not have lungs. A fish is cold-blooded. Freshwater fish do not purposefully drink; they absorb water through osmosis (although salt water fish do!) A fish lives in water. A fish is covered in scales that act like its armor.
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This post was proofread by Grammarly