If you’re a parent who doesn’t always have time for a bedtime story, or your children have memorized Goodnight Moon after hearing it 17 times, allow us to present you with an alternative to a simple pre-sleep story: telling your kids a new fun fact each night!
One parent on Reddit recently asked others to share the best, simple fun facts that can satiate a child’s curiosity at bedtime, and readers did not disappoint. Below, you’ll find all of the best facts that both kiddos and adults can enjoy, so be sure to upvote the info you can’t wait to share with your little ones!
This post may include affiliate links.
"Arctic" means "Bear" "Antarctic" means "No Bear". Not because polar bears live in the arctic and no bears live in the antarctic, but because to get to the arctic you follow the bear constellations, the Big and Little Dipper, and to get to the antarctic you go away from them.
In Switzerland, it's illegal to own just one guinea pig; if you have any, you have to have at least two. They get lonely!
A flock of sheep in North Wales had to be quarantined because they'd learnt to lay down and roll over cattle grids. If they'd made contact with other sheep they might have passed the behaviour on, and all the cattle grids in Britain would become ineffective.
Most elephants weigh less than the tongue of a blue whale!
The rarest precious jewels in the universe are not diamonds or rubies, they're pearls and amber.. Most precious stones just need minerals and pressure, and that's found everywhere. Amber needs trees, and pearls need oysters, and those are only on earth.
Did you know that there are colors that humans can't see? Animals like the mantis shrimp can see a lot more colors than we can, which means that there are "secret colors" that we will never get to know about. Non 4-year-old explanation: the vast majority of humans see things in "channels" of red, green and blue. Some humans are lucky and are born with four "channels", called [tetrachromats]. Mantis shrimp see things in TWELVE different "channels", and can even see ultraviolet and polarized light.
Its funny how all of these end up being animal facts.
While sea otters sleep, they hold paws so they don't float away from each other.
Also, sugar is pretty much tasteless to cats. They don't have taste buds for sweetness.
Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.
Might be kind of “big thinking” for a 4y but that has always stuck with me.
Butterflies taste with their feet. When they land on a flower, they can tell if it's good to eat just by standing on it.
Birds are dinosaurs.
Whales and dolphins are more closely related to hippos than fish.
A cartoonist named the spikes on the stegosaurus tail.
There are more plastic flamingo lawn ornaments in the US than there are wild flamingos in the entire world.
Horses can't throw up and will get sick from tummy aches to potentially need surgery.
And it can be fatal. Also, instead of having multiple stomachs and ruminating, they have a 4ft long chamber in their intestine called the caecum, filled with bacteria that breaks down their roughage. Changes to a horse's diet must be made slowly so the bacterial strains have time to adapt. Lastly, if they don't chew their food properly (say, if they rush their meal or they have bad teeth) they can get 'choke'. Not the same as in humans, it's a function of having a long and horizontal oesophagus. A food bolus can get stuck partway to the stomach and causes a bulge into the trachea (windpipe), severely restricting breathing. The vet will try 'drenching' (forcing liquid down) but it's not always successful. Very traumatic all around. My local yard lost a pony to choke a couple of weeks ago, devastating.
1. Honey never spoils. Archaeologists have found pots of honey in ancient Egyptian tombs that are over 3,000 years old and still perfectly edible!
2. Penguins waddle because their legs are short and their bodies are chubby. It helps them balance on the ice.
3. The sound a giraffe makes is called a "bleat." It's sort of like a sheep's sound but much quieter.
4. A group of flamingos is called a "flamboyance." Isn't that a fun word?
5. Octopuses have three hearts! Two pump blood to the gills, and one pumps blood to the rest of the body.
6. Lightning is like a giant spark of electricity. It happens when tiny ice crystals bump into each other in a cloud.
7. Bees dance to tell other bees where to find yummy flowers. It's like a bee dance party!
8. Cats have a special "meow" just for humans. They learned that we pay attention when they make that sound.
9. Your fingerprints are unique. No one else in the world has the same fingerprints as you!
The fruit orange was named before we had named a color orange
Did you know that cats aren't technically domesticated? They're still technically wild.
Actually, not exactly. The house cat (Felis Silvestris Catus) descended from the African Wild Cat (Felis Silvestris Lybica), and is now a separate species that is considered domesticated. True wild cats cannot be domesticated. That said, house cats (FS Catus) can become feral and do pretty well in the wild (except for my dumb cat who once lost his food bowl while sitting next to it).
Tell them "Right now, as you are going to bed at night in the middle of winter, there is another little child somewhere else walking up in the morning where it is summer".
* William I of England was too fat to fit in his coffin.
* Platypus lay eggs and make milk.
* Cows have 4 stomachs.
* Lots of fish can feel electricity
* Cheetahs mew like cats. They can't roar.
* Red seaweed lives deeper in the sea than green seaweed.
The Flemish giant rabbit can grow to be the size of a dog
There is no "size of a dog!" I see rabbits the size of a teacup Yorkie all the time, but I don't expect to see one the size of a Great Dane, or even a German Shepherd
Which dog? Dogs have a pretty substantial size range. Chihuahua? Newfoundland?
This has got to qualify as the most useless of all of the American methods of measurement.
🤔 Maybe some gene splicing could even produce a chihuahua the size of a dog! Wait! No-one wants that! Forget I mentioned it.
I work in a pet friendly place and a guy brought one in shopping once. It was absolutely massive, I think he said it weighed around 30 lbs! So fluffy!
So, I hate to nitpick. But that’s a large range of sizes. Can we be more specific? The size of a chihuahua, or a Great Dane or old English mastiff?
What kind of dog? Seriously dogs vary from a 1 pound, 4-inch tall chihuahua named Milly, to average 240 pound mastiffs. I don't want to meet a 240 pound rabbit.
Pretty much all rabbits can grow to the size of a dog, but not all dogs can grow to the size of a full grown rabbit.
Depends on what type of dog. A rabbit the size of a Great Dane would be a sight!
Not very helpful. There's a huge difference between a chihuahua and an Irish wolfhound.
We had a dwarf rabbit falling in love with our flemish Giant girl. It was the cutest thing
We are all made from star dust.
The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards.
Wombats poop cubes.
Looks just like the wombats that live in the nature reserve behind our fence in Australia.
Owls cannot turn their eyes in their sockets, they are fixed in place which is why they do the goofy little head rolls/bobs. Its their method of depth perception.
When owls bob their heads when zeroing on a prey target, their heads move in a triangle shape. It's believed they're using trigonometry to calculate.
tell her about those butterflies that have wing patterns that look like eyes that makes animals think they're a predator
a zebra's stripes are as unique as a human's fingerprints.
ok, let's try for a non-animal fact. the planet Venus spins in the opposite direction of other planets
a word spelled the same way forward as it is backwards is called a "palindrome." Mom, dad, and racecar are examples.
When it's Winter in the United States, it's Summer in Australia. When it's Winter in Australia, It's Summer in the United States.
If a month begins on a Sunday, it will have a Friday the 13th.
Cue the Bluey episode where they celebrated Christmas by the pool with a barbecue, and my niece and nephew were thoroughly puzzled (we're in Europe).
Sloths hair grows from their belly.
Sloths climb down from their tree about once a week to poop.
Kangaroos can pause their pregnancy.
Sharks sink if they stop swimming.
A giraffe has a nerve that goes from under their tongue alllllll the way down their neck down near their heart and then back up.
Only a small part of your eye can detect color. (Cones)
Smell is the strong scent tied to memory because the nerve that manages smell goes directly to the brain instead of having a connection along the way.
The tongue is the strongest muscle in the body by size to weight standards.
There’s a SKELETON hiding inside everyone you know!
I heard that on average there is more than one skeleton inside people
While a zebra is smaller than a horse, a zebra can kick with more power than a horse (I think a horse generates about 2000 psi with a kick, while zebras are closer to 3000 psi).
However, domesticated horses are often shod, which makes their kicks much more nasty than being kicked by a bare hoof. Speaking from experience...
the US government has a federal reserve of 1.4 million lbs of cheese
Sure I have some suited for children.
* not all ladybugs, are ladies.
* locust are just hungry hungry grasshoppers.
* Most of the fruit we eat is bought from other nations during the winter.
* with each mile you go into the earth, the more warm it gets.
* There is no pasta at the center of the earth.
* Many house cats wandering neighborhoods are more likely to visit a neighbor if they use the same detergent as their owners.
* Dogs will wait for you, almost forever.
* Tomatoes, Cassava root, potatoes, corn and supposedly ~~earthworms~~ ~~apple pie~~ Navy bean soup… are all from the American continent.
* Exercise allows you to become smarter and faster.
Start with a subject and do facts for a week then switch it up. For example
Dinosaur facts for a week, then space, then history, then geography.
If you could drive to outer space in a car like you were driving on the highway, it would only take about an hour to get there!
The Los Angeles angels translates to The The angels angels
Famingos get their color from what they eat (shrimp and algae)
The colour has the same source as the colour of carrots and of leaves in autumn. Chemicals known as carotenoids. The algae that flamingos eat use them as sunscreen.
If everyone alive played a series of Rock, Paper, Scissors games, where the winners of each round would play eachother until there was only one winner. We would only need to have 33 rounds played for there to be one winner left.
You could fit 1 million earths inside the sun
Related: just because you could do something does not mean you should.
There were still wooly mammoth roaming the earth at the time the Egyptian pyramids were built
It takes 8 minutes for light to reach the Earth from the Sun.
"Pirates" wore eye patches not because they lost an eye but so that one eye would always be accustomed to the dark. For example when they had to go below deck they could swap the eye patch over and instantly see easier.
There is NO historical proof of this. Eye patches on pirates are a part of popular fiction's portrayal, along with peg legs and parrots.
Look up the immortal jellyfish!
Not the Immortal Jellyfish, but when the Crossota jellyfish was discovered in the Mariana Trench my daughter insisted on dressing up as one for the school Fete Day (the theme was sealife). Now that was an interesting costume to make - lots of tulle for the bell, LEDs connected to a power pack inside the bell for the gonads (she LOVED telling the staff that's what the lights were) and tubes of LEDs hanging down for the tentacles.
Elephants paint their toenails red so they can hide in cherry trees.
Works too, nobody has ever seen an elephant in a cherry tree.
That's why it is dangerous to walk in a cherry orchard. 'Cos of all the elephants falling out of the trees.
The first popsicle was invented when a boy accidentally left a cup of soda with a stick in it outside and it froze.
There are more Lego people than real people on Earth.
Guess what? Sneezes are tiny explosions your nose makes when it's too full of giggles and tickles. So, every time you sneeze, it's just your nose having a little party!
That salt doesn't melt ice; it stops water from freezing in the first place. My milkshakes do not, in fact, bring all the boys to the yard.
It's rare to see a shooting star and you can imagine one but it's even rarer to see one that glows brighter and brighter than disappear. It means it was coming straight at you and burnt down while entering the atmosphere.
You have to be at the right place, right time and looking at the right direction and be able to recognize it. Brings when stars align to a whole new meaning.
If you live in an area with little light pollution, it's actually pretty common to see shooting stars.
Let her sit on the bed with one hand raised as high as she can and the other as low as she can. Stay like that a while, maybe 30 sec? Then compare the hands. The top hand should be visibly paler because of the blood circulation being "a little delayed". At least with my skin color it is very visible.
Put one arm up. Rotate it up and down twice them put both arms Infront of you. The one you twisted should be longer!
Ice is just really, really cold water.
Steam is just really, really hot water.
Anything about the color wheel and mixing colors.
Annoyingly, "steam" and "water vapour" are exact synonyms and both describe two completely different things. One of them is gaseous water, and the other one is liquid water droplets suspended in air. Also annoyingly, "mold" and "mould" are exact synonyms both describing two completely different things.
Gestation period for pigs is 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days.
The inside of your forearm is the same length as your foot. Not sure if this applies to 4 year olds. Baby rabbits are called kits/kittens. My then 4 year old taught me that. You can’t lick your own elbow.
You can always see your nose, but your brain hides it from your view unless you look for it.
Mercury is most often the closest planet to Earth.
(on average as the planets orbit around the sun)
If I knew what career 4 year old wanted to be. I would give every known fact about that career to make it easier for kid to remember into life the basic concept.
Dads tell their kids jokes in case they become clowns or stand-up comics.
Humans are incapable of creating faces. When you dream people, you have seen them somewhere before.
This makes no sense. Cartoonist imagine faces all the time. For example, why couldn't people dream of a face with more than one nose?
Crab sticks do not actually contain any crab. And from 1993, manufacturers have been legally obliged to label them ‘crab flavoured sticks’.
you can actually jump out of an airplane without a parachute, but only once
Why the hell would you tell them this? You may as well tell them there is no such thing as poison, it's a life time supply
Poll Question
Thanks! Check out the results:
Subscribe to Access
Exclusive Polls
By entering your email and clicking Subscribe, you're agreeing to let us send you customized marketing messages about us and our advertising partners. You are also agreeing to our Privacy Policy.
Thank you! You've successfully subscribed to newsletters!
You May Also Like
Woman Refuses To Chip In For Babysitting Because She Doesn’t Even Have Kids, Asks If She’s A Jerk
Do you think childless individuals should be expected to chip in for group babysitting costs during friend gatherings?
“They Saw The Blood Leave My Body”: Woman Refuses To Tip 10% At Bridal Store
How do you feel about the practice of tipping at a bridal store?
17 Y.O. Is Done Sharing Her Birthday With Her Late Twin, Parents Are Not Having It
Do you think the girl should be allowed to celebrate her birthday without the remembrance of her deceased twin?
Here's my contribution: most people think that Mt Everest is the tallest mountain the world but it's not. Mt Everest is the *highest* mountain in the world, the tallest mountain is Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Mauna Kea is both taller and lower than Mt Everest because it starts on the ocean floor and most of it is underwater.
A giraffes tongue is purple to stop it from getting sun burnt. Maned wolves are not really wolves. Their name means Golden Dog And they bark, not howl. An iguana has 3 eyes. The 3rd is on top of their head, it detects light changes.
Here's my contribution: most people think that Mt Everest is the tallest mountain the world but it's not. Mt Everest is the *highest* mountain in the world, the tallest mountain is Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Mauna Kea is both taller and lower than Mt Everest because it starts on the ocean floor and most of it is underwater.
A giraffes tongue is purple to stop it from getting sun burnt. Maned wolves are not really wolves. Their name means Golden Dog And they bark, not howl. An iguana has 3 eyes. The 3rd is on top of their head, it detects light changes.
