How to host trivia for kids

1. One phone, passed round the table

Open a round on the round maker or a ready round, press Play and choose how many teams. Each team takes one question in turn. Peabody reads the question and the three answers aloud (the 🔊 button), the team taps a box, and the answer, a line about it and its source show at once. A right answer is a star. Teams are Foxes, Bears, Owls and Frogs, so nobody types a name, and the scores stay on that phone even if it goes to sleep.

2. A laptop on a TV or a projector

Plug a laptop into the screen, open the round and press 📺 Big screen: the question and the three boxes grow to fill it. Teams can call out A, B or C and the host taps. For a room, ask teams to agree before they call, which stops the fastest voice winning every time.

Buzzers and a scoreboard

With two or more teams, 📺 Big screen puts a buzzer per team under the question: a big button each, or keys 1 to 4 on the laptop. The first press rings the bell and answers; the other buttons go grey for two seconds. Reading your own questions instead? The buzzer works on its own for two to eight animal teams, and the scoreboard keeps their points on the device with a big +1 each. At the end of a round, “Add these stars to the scoreboard” puts each team’s stars there, and “Print certificates” prints one page a team. Every team gets a cheerful one: the top score is Tonight’s champions, and everyone else is a Star team.

3. Paper

Every round has a print page: the ten question cards, two answer sheets to a page with A, B and C to circle, and the key on the last page to fold back. It prints on Letter or A4. A team writes its own name on its sheet, on paper only.

4. Mixed ages

A round never mixes ages, because a question a 13-year-old enjoys loses a 6-year-old. At a mixed table, play one round per age on the same three themes: the little ones go first, everybody hears every round, and the conversation is about the same animals and planets. Most ready rounds have all three ages on one page.

5. In class

Two to four teams, the big screen, and a round on what the class has just studied. Ten questions take about fifteen minutes with talk. Ties are fine: the end screen names the champions, and every team has its stars.

Keeping it kind

• Stars, not points lost: a wrong answer costs nothing, and the note after it means the whole table learns the answer.
• Let the youngest answer first, or let a little one point at a box instead of saying it.
• Read the sources aloud now and then. A fact comes from somewhere, and kids like knowing where.

Where the questions come from

Peabody wrote every question in its own words and checked each science, nature and Thanksgiving answer against one page from NASA, NOAA, USGS, the National Park Service, the USDA, the FDA, the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Natural History Museum in London, KidsHealth or the NIH. No AI makes a question when you press a button. The Thanksgiving round is about the harvest, the food and how the date was set.