Earth Quiz for Kids

Answer: Continents

We have seven different large land masses on our planet. Known as continents, these are Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica and Australia. Of these, Asia is the biggest continent and Australia is the smallest. They're all huge though, and contain many different landforms, cities and states.

Answer: Mountains

Mountains are formed by processes deep within the earth. As the huge plates containing the continents move about very, very slowly, they occasionally rub against one another. When this happens, mountains can be formed in one of three ways.

The first is when two plates come together, and because there's no more room to move, they force the land up between them. These are known as fold mountains. The second is when one plate slides under another and forces the first plate up. These are called volcanic mountains. The third is when land forms rub together along seams in the crust of the earth as they move past each other. When that happens, one may rise higher than the other. These are known as block mountains.

Don't worry about any of this happening however, because those plates move very slowly indeed.

Answer: Forests

Forests are huge areas of land containing large amounts of trees and other lovely lush vegetation. About ten per cent of the earth is covered in beautiful forests. Apart from being places of beauty, they are very important for the continuation of life on the planet.

They help create the very air we breathe and they give shelter and nourishment to thousands of different animals, insects, plants and birds.

Answer: Rivers

Rivers are natural fresh water courses that flow towards a sea, or a lake, or join up with other rivers. Some of them, in very dry continents such as Australia, take a wrong turn, flow into desert areas instead, and eventually dry up there, or disappear down under the ground. Beginning as very tiny trickles, these water courses are given life from falling rain or melting glaciers. As they always flow down hill, all these trickles eventually join up to form larger trickles, then small flows, streams and eventually rivers.

Some rivers are relatively small and well behaved, as the lovely one in this accompanying photograph, but others are huge and mighty like the Amazon River in South America. It's so large and important that it does exactly what it wants. It also contains the most water in the world. The Nile River in Egypt, however, is the longest - but only just.

Answer: Deserts

Hopefully you didn't select desserts by mistake, because they're sweets we usually eat after dinner. It doesn't matter if you did though, as these quizzes are all about learning new information and having fun.

A desert is an immensely dry area of land where very little rain falls at all. As a result, hardly any vegetation grows there, as in this photo. When this happens, the soil has no tree roots to hold it together, and it becomes like sand, very loose and very arid. About one third of the land on our planet is comprised of desert.

In some countries, they have programs where they try to green up the deserts and make them come alive with plants and trees. In other countries they use the hot conditions found in most deserts to create solar energy from the forces of the sun.

Answer: Minerals

Minerals are different products found within the earth that mankind has been using for thousands of years to help make their living conditions more comfortable, or to wear as ornaments, or to use to make weapons of war. Hopefully, one day though, we'll never have to make weapons of war ever again.

There are almost 5,000 different minerals on our planet. How amazing is that? These include ones containing iron, copper and zinc, as well as rubies and sapphires and so on. I certainly can't list 5,000 of them! In their natural form, they're fascinating to look at and study, and to learn all about the uses to which they can be put. As humanity moves out to exploring other planets in the great universe, who knows what other wonderful minerals will be discovered along the way.

Answer: Waterfalls

Wouldn't you just love to sit underneath that small waterfall for a while? A free and refreshing cold shower. Waterfalls are formed by rivers, as they flow towards their ultimate destinations, dropping over various different heights. Some drops are quite small, but some are breathtakingly high, such as the Angel Fall in Venezuela, South America. Some water flowing over these drops is small in amount, but some is simply enormous, such as in the Niagara Falls on the border between the United States and Canada, or the Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe and Zambia, Africa.

Hydroelectricity is electricity generated by the force of falling waters over large waterfalls. This is power from a renewable resource, and it's a wonderful idea. In our world, at the beginning of the 21st century, most of the electricity generated by water amounted to 16 per cent. Manufacturers are hoping to increase this output by three per cent each year for the next 25 years. Won't that be wonderful when that happens? Renewable electricity can now be obtained from solar power, the force of the wind and the power of water. If the world could be filled with renewable electricity, we'd never have to dig into the earth again to find non-renewable sources of coal to manufacture it instead.

Answer: Animals

There are millions of different animals in the world today. These are divided into major categories such as birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Other sub-categories include the molluscs such as oysters and squid (ugh), anthropods such as centipedes and spiders (eek!), and annelids such as earthworms and leeches (eewww).

Answer: Oceans

Oceans and seas are bodies of salty water which take up two-thirds of the space on our beautiful planet. We have five major oceans of different sizes on earth. The largest of these by far is the Pacific. The other four are the Atlantic, Indian, Southern or Antarctic, and the Artic. Seas are usually known as such because most are found enclosed wholly and partially by land. Oceans on the other hand all join up into one huge water mass that roams free and unfettered all over the globe.

The oceans are vastly important to the existence of everything. They form part of the giant cycle of life which continues endlessly. Within their mysterious depths they contain over 230,000 known species of creatures, with another two million more believed to exist. The reason this figure is at yet unknown is because most of our ocean floors have yet to be explored. Who knows what wonderful discoveries have yet to be found there.

Answer: People

There are a LOT of us on this planet. We come in all different sizes, colours, and hair and eye types. We are tall and short, fat and thin, healthy or ill, grumpy, sad or happy. We are all different and yet we are all alike. We speak different languages, we dress differently, we like different foods, we have different religions, and we have different values and cultures. Sometimes this causes problems and war is the result. This is very sad and many precious lives are lost. Within every single human being lies the potential to do something wonderful for the world. Every single one of us has something to contribute, no matter how small or large, to this beautiful planet we call Earth.

Be kind to one another always.