Word and fact of the day: Thursday, October 22, 2026

Peabody's word of the day for October 22, 2026 is "scurry" (run with quick little steps) at level 2, up to "ebullient" at level 8, with a fact at each of levels 1 to 13. Words and facts come from Peabody's own banks, with no AI, and are free through the end of 2026.

By Aaron, founder of PeabodyChecked 22 October 2026

Level	Word of the day	What it means	In a sentence
2	scurry	run with quick little steps	The mice scurry under the rug.
3	soar	fly high in the sky	Eagles soar over the canyon.
4	jolly	happy and full of fun	The jolly giant laughed and danced.
5	mysterious	strange and hard to explain	A mysterious map appeared in the attic.
6	prolong	make something last longer	We prolonged the picnic by playing games.
7	boisterous	noisy, lively, and full of energy	The boisterous puppies tumbled in the yard.
8	ebullient	cheerful and bursting with energy	The ebullient host greeted every guest.

Fact of the day

Level	Fact	From
1	Saving means you keep it for later.	Spend or Save (Money)
2	Why does the moon look different every night? The moon itself never changes shape. What changes is the part we can see.	The Moon's Shapes (Science)
3	Try this one: three friends each have one pet, either a cat, a dog or a fish. Mia's pet does not bark, and it does not live in water. So Mia's pet must be the cat! Crossing out every wrong answer leaves only the right one.	Clue by Clue (Think)
4	A circuit has to be a closed loop, like a circle with no gaps. If one wire comes loose, the path is broken and the light goes out. A switch is like a tiny gate in the loop. Flip it on, and the gate closes so electricity can flow. Flip it off, and the gate opens. The flow stops, and the bulb goes dark.	Circuits (Workshop)
5	A variable only holds one value at a time. When a new value goes in, the old value is gone for good. If a program says lives = 3 and then lives = lives - 1, the box now holds 2, not 3. Coders follow each line in order, one by one, and write down the value after every single step. This careful checking is called tracing, and it helps them find mistakes in their programs before anyone plays the game.	Variables: A Box That Remembers (Code & Robots)
6	Every cell is wrapped in a thin outer layer called the cell membrane, which works a lot like a gate. It lets food and water into the cell, and it lets waste back out. Inside, most cells have a nucleus, which is the control center of the cell. The nucleus holds the instructions that tell the cell how to grow and what job it should do. Some living things, like bacteria, are made of just one single cell. Others, like you, are made of trillions of cells that work together, and your skin, your bones, and your blood each have their own kinds of cells.	Cells: Life's Building Blocks (Science)
7	To find out what really causes something, scientists run a fair test, which means they change only one thing and keep everything else exactly the same. Suppose you want to know whether plant food helps beans grow taller. You could plant two groups of beans in the same kind of soil, give them the same amount of water, and set them in the same sunny window. Only one of the two groups gets plant food, and if that group grows taller, then the plant food, which is the one thing you changed, is the likely cause. Scientists call the thing you change on purpose the variable you are testing.	Cause or Just Together? (Think)
8	How does a roller coaster keep going after the first big hill? It runs on energy that keeps changing from one form to another. Energy is the ability to make things move or change, and kinetic energy is the energy of motion. Anything that moves has kinetic energy, from a rolling bowling ball to a flying bird. The faster an object moves, the more kinetic energy it has, and speed matters a great deal, since doubling an object's speed makes its kinetic energy four times as large. Mass matters too, because a truck and a bicycle moving at the same speed do not carry the same energy. Since the truck has so much more mass, it has much more kinetic energy.	Kinetic and Potential Energy (Workshop)
9	Tropical rainforests lie near the equator, between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. They stay warm and frost-free all year, and they get more rain than any other biome, usually at least 2,000 millimeters in a year. Deserts sit at the other end of the scale. A desert gets about 250 millimeters of rain a year or even less, the least of any biome. Many deserts swing from hot days to chilly nights, because the dry air lets heat escape quickly after dark. Grasslands fall in between, with roughly 500 to 900 millimeters of rain a year. That is enough water for grass, but usually too little for many trees, so the trees that do grow there are found mostly along streams.	Biomes of the World (Geography)
10	Lenders also want to know whether a borrower has repaid loans responsibly in the past. A credit report is a statement that has information about a person's credit activity and current credit situation, such as their history of paying loans. The three biggest companies that collect this information are Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. A credit score is a number calculated from the information in a credit report, and it predicts how likely a person is to pay a loan back on time. Most credit scores range from 300 to 850. Lenders use these scores to decide whether to lend and at what interest rate. According to the CFPB, paying bills on time, every time, has the greatest impact on a score. This trail explains credit; it doesn't tell anyone what to borrow.	Borrowing and Credit Scores (Money)
11	Counting letter names gives an interval its number, but counting half steps gives it a quality, which describes its exact size. A major third, such as C up to E, spans four half steps, while a minor third, such as C up to E flat, spans only three. That single half step makes a remarkably noticeable difference, because major thirds tend to sound bright and minor thirds tend to sound darker, the same emotional contrast you hear between major and minor chords. A perfect fifth, such as C up to G, spans seven half steps, and it is the interval that gives the circle of fifths its name. An octave spans twelve half steps, and the higher note vibrates exactly twice as fast as the lower one, which is why the two notes sound so remarkably similar.	Intervals (Music)
12	Astronomers call this steady stage the main sequence, and it is the longest part of any star's existence. Our Sun is a main sequence star that has been fusing hydrogen into helium for billions of years, and scientists estimate that it is a little less than halfway through its lifetime. A star's mass, meaning the amount of matter it contains, controls almost everything about its future. It might seem reasonable to expect that a heavier star, since it has more fuel available to burn, would last longer than a lighter one, but in fact precisely the opposite is true. The stronger gravity of a massive star squeezes its core much harder, so it consumes its hydrogen far more rapidly and shines far more brightly. A small, dim star, on the other hand, uses its fuel so slowly that it can continue shining for much longer than the Sun ever will, which means that among the stars, the smallest ones last the longest.	The Life of a Star (Science)
13	A strong rhetorical analysis is organized around claims about strategy, not around a summary that simply retells the speech from beginning to end; a retelling shows what happened, but it does not show why it worked. A thesis for an analysis of Maya's speech might argue that she persuades a doubtful teenage crowd by replacing general warnings with evidence they can see and by presenting herself as an ordinary helper instead of an expert. Each body paragraph would then examine one strategy, quote or describe the moment where it appears and explain its effect on these particular listeners. The appeals you may already know, ethos, pathos and logos, are useful tools here. But naming an appeal is never enough, because the analysis must also explain how it works in that setting. Finally, you may judge how effective the choices are, but that judgment depends on the purpose and the listeners, not on whether you personally agree with the message.	Rhetorical Analysis (Write)

Each fact is a page from one of Peabody's World trails, which carry named sources; this one cites Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Money as You Grow, ages 3–5: you need money to buy things; you may have to wait to buy something you want.

How the day's picks are made

Nothing is written for the day and nothing is asked of a child. The date picks one word from each level's bank of 40 words and one fact from each level's bank (61 facts at level 1, 63 facts at level 2, 53 facts at level 3, 50 facts at level 4, 49 facts at level 5, 39 facts at level 6, 39 facts at level 7, 39 facts at level 8, 39 facts at level 9, 39 facts at level 10, 38 facts at level 11, 39 facts at level 12 and 39 facts at level 13), visiting each before any repeats. The levels are Peabody's own thirteen; the word bank covers levels 2 to 8, the fact bank levels 1 to 3.

Keep going

Questions parents ask

How do I use the word of the day?

Say the word and its meaning at dinner, look for it in a book, and use it once yourself. Then see if your child spots it.

Which level should my child read?

Pick the row near the reading level Peabody shows for them. Level 2 is early readers and level 8 is a strong middle-school reader; the levels and grades page shows where each grade starts.

Is it free?

Yes, free through the end of 2026, with no sign-up.

Checked against how Peabody works on 22 October 2026. Written with help from AI, from Peabody's own code and library. Peabody is a learning app, not an assessment: if you're worried about your child's learning, talk to their teacher.