Do you love a good riddle? Are you delighted if you can work it out? I really recommend that you share a good number of riddles with your children.
Riddles are fun but they’re more beneficial for children than you might first imagine and perhaps in more ways than you might expect too! However I suggest that you don’t give the answer away too quickly, otherwise many of the benefits are lost…
Riddles often make us laugh out loud. We all know that laughter is health-giving, relaxing the brain and body, helping us release stress, encouraging positive mental health.
Riddles can support children’s problem solving, logic and critical thinking skills. If we wrestle with a riddle for a period of time it can help our concentration, focus and brain dexterity.
Riddles can be a wonderful challenge which help to motivate children to continue working.
Riddles have been shown to improve children’s comprehension and creativity. They’re likely to learn new words and new ways to use them, subliminally learning rhythm and rhyming.
Riddles help us to bond with each other, when we’re working out riddles together we become a team on a giant quest.
Children can share the riddles they’ve learnt with family members, peers and teachers thus engaging in playful intellectual discussion and banter, allowing them to teach and learn all at the same time.
So I ask you to join me in sharing riddles playfully and in a gesture of fun.
Sofie’s riddle time
Here are some riddles for you to guess. Scroll down to the bottom of the page for the answers – but not too soon!!!
They have all featured in our series ‘Bedtime Stories with Danyah and Guests’ on YouTube (Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6.30pm).
We love riddles – we’d love you to send us some of your own on one of my social media pages on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
- Where can you find cities, towns, shops and streets, but no people?
- As light as air, there’s nothing in it, and no one can hold it for more than a minute.
- I follow the sun from north to south, my name, the answer, is in your mouth.
- I am a fruit but as a vegetable I’m sold, I am so hot but sound so cold. What am I?
- Which bow can’t be untied?
- What has 22 legs and 2 wings but cannot fly?
- Once in a minute, twice in a moment, but never in a thousand years.
- Into this world I am born, without substance, shape or form, I give a cry and then am silent forever. What am I?
- What is the only water you can carry in a sieve?
- There is one that has a head without an eye and one that has an eye without a head. You may find the answer if you try, and when all is said half the answer hangs upon a thread.
- What goes around the world, but stays in the corner?
- Give me food and I will live, give me water and I will die. What am I?