With family experiences in mind, we’ve put together a quiz to test how much you really know about the city you’re raising your children in. Jump in, or better yet, share the quiz with your children. Hopefully, it’ll bring back some nice memories and inspire some new adventures.
1. Our zoos and aquariums have lots of popular animals. Match the following with the names everyone knows them by:
A. A male California sea lion at the Bronx Zoo
B. A polar bear at the Central Park Zoo
C. A sea otter at the New York Aquarium
1. Gus
2. Tazo
3. Kiani
2. Place the following Broadway shows in order of the shortest- to the longest-running:
– “Mary Poppins”
– “The Lion King”
– “Mamma Mia”
3. Back in its heyday, Coney Island had a very famous seven-story hotel shaped, surprisingly, like:
A. An elephant
B. A Trojan horse
C. A Ferris wheel
D. An apple
4. Santa did an especially good job of getting around the city last holiday season. You could have taken your child to meet him at any of the following NYC establishments except. . .
A. ABC Carpet and Home
B. American Girl Place
C. Bloomingdale’s
D. Ripley’s “Believe it or Not!”
E. Circle Line Sightseeing Cruises
5. Which popular New York City eatery has menu items called the Pooch-ini and Bag O’ Bones for its canine customers?
A. Gray’s Papaya
B. Dunkin’ Donuts
C. Big Daddy’s
D. Shake Shack
6. The original contest to design Central Park required designers to include what recreational feature?
A. Playgrounds
B. Ice skating rinks
C. Archery fields
7. Taking a child for a walk over a bridge offers awesome city views and a great adventure. All of the following NYC bridges have pedestrian walkways except:
A. Brooklyn Bridge
B. GW Bridge
C. Verrazano-Narrows Bridge
D. RFK (Tri-Borough) Bridge
8. The city is one big playground! Match each of the following playgrounds with its distinguishing feature:
A. Billy Johnson Playground in Central Park
B. Imagination Playground in Prospect Park
C. Union Square Playground
D. Brooklyn Bridge Park, Pier 6
1. It has Sandbox Village, probably the largest park sandbox in the city.
2. It sports an enormous bronze dragon which doubles as a water feature.
3. It boasts a 45-foot long granite slide. Weeeeeee!
4. It has a large silver climbing orb.
9. One of the most popular and acclaimed children’s book writers of our time, Mo Willems, set his award-winning Knuffle Bunny: A Cautionary Tale in his then neighborhood, Park Slope, and added a lot of local imagery. Which of the following was not pictured in the book?
A. The park
B. The school
C. The food co-op
D. The laundromat
10. Pale Male and Lola were the names of:
A. The first panda bears at the Bronx Zoo.
B. The two feline stars of the musical Cats who fall in love.
C. The red tail hawks who nested above a top-story window of an apartment building.
D. The original clown couple in the Big Apple Circus.
11. The American Museum of Natural History contains the world’s largest collection of vertebrate fossils, numbering…
A. Nearly 1 million specimens
B. Nearly 30,000
D. Nearly 250,000
E. Nearly 500,000
12. Cupcake emporiums have become all the rage. Which of the following is not the name of a cupcake store in our sweetest of cities?
A. Sprinkles
B. Crumbs
C. Magnolia
D. Frosting
E. Butter Lane
F. Sugar Sweet Sunshine
G. BabyCakes
13. Popular with tourists and ever-present in movies, the observation deck of the Empire State Building welcomes many NYC kids every year. Even its floor is kind of famous. What floor is it?
A. 92nd floor
B. 86th floor
C. 81st floor
D. 75th floor
14. Children’s museums are treasures—and we are blessed with five of them. See if you can match each museum with one of its special features.
A. Children’s Museum of Manhattan (CMOM)
B. Children’s Museum of the Arts (CMA)
C. The Brooklyn Children’s Museum
D. DiMenna Children’s History Museum (of the New York Historical Society)
E. Staten Island Children’s Museum
1. It boasts a lofted “ball pond” and slide.
2. It features PlayWorks, an interactive 4,000 square-foot playing and learning environment featuring a talking dragon named Alphie.
3. It has a photo-gallery of prominent New Yorkers and a photo-booth where children can snap their pictures and add the occupation they hope to become when they grow up.
4. It contains a vibrant cityscape of iconic neighborhood shops shrunk to a kid’s scale.
5. It houses a fantasy port of call on a pirate ship. Ahoy!
15. Kids love presidents and presidents have spent a good deal of time in our city. Match each president to the following NYC event:
A. Theodore Roosevelt
B. Abraham Lincoln
C. Thomas Jefferson
D. George Washington
1. He was sworn in as President at Manhattan’s Federal Hall.
2. He was born in his family home on 28 East 20th Street.
3. On his very first trip to NYC, his horse ran away twice and he almost drowned while fording a river.
4. He left an opera at the Academy of Music early because the police had received notice of a plot to kill him.
How Did You Do?
Score your quiz by comparing it with the answers here.
