Kids Learning

Would You Rather Questions for Kids: Printable Prompts for the Table and the Car

By Kids Learning editorial team · Updated

Would-you-rather prompts, jokes and game boards from the kit laid out on a table

Would you rather questions work because they ask a child to choose and then explain. There is no right answer, nobody is graded, and the follow-up ("why?") is where the fun is. They are a quiet way to get a child talking at dinner, on a drive or in a waiting room, and they fit neatly on a printable placemat. Below are questions sorted by age, plus ways to use them so they feel like a game and not an interview.

Ages 4 to 6: concrete and silly

Young children like choices they can picture.

Tip: let a four-year-old point or draw the answer. They do not need to explain.

Ages 7 to 9: a little more thinking

Tip: ask "what would you do first?" after the choice. It starts a story.

Ages 10 to 12: choices with trade-offs

Tip: ask for the trade-off. "What is the best thing about your choice, and what is the hardest?"

Rules for keeping it kind

Ways to use them

At the table

Choose one question per course. Everyone answers, including the adults, and the youngest goes first. This gives shy children a turn when they are not under pressure.

In the car

Pair them with road trip games. Questions work when a child cannot look down for long, because it is all talking.

In a waiting room

A single card in a bag is enough. See waiting room and restaurant activities for more ideas.

On a placemat

A prompt block with two boxes ("A" and "B") and a line for "because..." fits any mat. The kit includes 60 prompts you can drop into a frame, and 12 finished mats that already show how it looks. See the placemat build guide for the layout.

Turn it into a mini tournament

Give each player a pencil and a tally. Ask a question, everyone writes A or B, then reveals at once. Score a point if you match the person on your left. It is a gentle way to practice reading expressions and guessing what others think.

Make your own

The best questions come from the child's world. Ask yourself:

  1. What is their favorite animal, food or place?
  2. What are they curious about?
  3. What would make them laugh?

Combine two things they love, and you have a question. Write four per week and keep them in a jar.

Printable ready to use

The Placemat Press · Activity Mat Creator Kit is a set of digital templates, and one part of it is a library of 60 would-you-rather prompts you can place on a mat, a card or a page. It also includes 40 clean jokes, 112 simple games, 349 commercial-use elements overall and a commercial licence for finished placemats. It costs $17.00 once. If you plan to sell finished cards or mats, the licence covers finished products you make, not the loose elements.

A last idea: the family question of the week

Print one question on the placemat for Sunday dinner and keep a note of the answers. Children love to see how their answers change from week to week. After a year, you have a record of what each child thought at each age, and a stack of mats worth keeping.

Sorting questions into three piles

Over time you will notice that questions fall into three kinds, and a good set mixes them.

Silly questions make everyone laugh and lower the temperature at a tense table. "Would you rather have spaghetti for hair or noodles for fingers?" Nobody needs to think hard, and that is the point.

Imagination questions invite a story. "Would you rather live in a lighthouse or a treehouse?" The follow-up, "what would you see from your window?", turns a one-word answer into a minute of talking.

Choice-with-cost questions suit older children. "Would you rather have a pet robot that never needs feeding but cannot cuddle, or a pet cat that cuddles but sheds everywhere?" These show how a child weighs things and are fun for adults to answer too.

When you fill a placemat block, pick one from each pile. The silly one gets the first laugh, the imagination one gets the talking and the cost one gives older children a reason to stay at the table. If you keep a jar of questions, write the pile on the back of each slip so you can draw one of each type without thinking about it.

Frequently asked questions

What age are would you rather questions good for?

From about 4 with simple, concrete choices, up to teens with harder dilemmas. Match the question to the child's imagination and experience.

How do I keep them kind?

Avoid choices that single out a person or involve something scary for a young child. Stay with silly, imaginative and food or animal choices.

How many questions do I need for a meal?

Three to five is plenty. One conversation often turns into a longer one.

Can I put them on a placemat?

Yes. A single prompt block with two boxes to tick or draw in works well on a mat.