Continents and Oceans Quiz: Find the 7 Continents and 5 Oceans

How to play the continents and oceans quiz

The map shows the whole world, with the seven continents in white and the five oceans in blue. There are 12 places to find.

• Click the map. The quiz names a place ("Click the Indian Ocean" or "Click South America") and you click it. Click anywhere in the ocean's water.
• Type the name. One place is highlighted; type its name. "Pacific" counts for the Pacific Ocean, and "Oceania" or "Australia" both work.
• Multiple choice. Pick the highlighted place from four names.
• Drag labels. Drag the 12 labels onto the map, or tap a label and then the place. This is the closest match to the paper worksheet.

Practice has no timer and brings missed places back. The Quiz is timed and scores first tries. Challenge loops through the 12 places for 60 seconds, so speed and accuracy both count.

The seven continents

Country counts are those used in our map quizzes. Antarctica has no countries; it is governed by the Antarctic Treaty, signed in 1959, which sets it aside for peace and science.

The five oceans

The Pacific is larger than all the land on Earth put together. The Arctic is the smallest and shallowest ocean, and much of it is covered by sea ice for most of the year. The Southern Ocean surrounds Antarctica and is defined by a strong current, the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, that flows all the way around the continent.

Where does one continent or ocean end?

Some boundaries are easy: the Atlantic separates the Americas from Europe and Africa. Others are conventions that people agreed on:

• Europe and Asia share one landmass. The usual dividing line follows the Ural Mountains, the Ural River and the Caspian Sea, then the Caucasus Mountains to the Black Sea. On this map, the line through Russia is drawn along the Urals.
• Africa and Asia meet at the Suez Canal in Egypt.
• North and South America meet at the border of Panama and Colombia.
• The oceans are all connected. Map makers draw their borders along lines of longitude or between capes: for example, the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are usually divided at Cape Agulhas, the southern tip of Africa, and the Southern Ocean begins at 60° south. The blue areas on the map follow these conventions approximately.

What is a continent, anyway?

A continent is one of Earth's very large landmasses. Geographers usually also look at what lies underneath: continents sit on thick, lighter continental crust, while the ocean floor is made of thinner, denser oceanic crust. That's why islands such as Great Britain, Japan and New Guinea are counted with the continent next to them; they sit on the same continental shelf. It also explains why New Zealand is sometimes described as part of a mostly underwater continent called Zealandia.

Continents also move. The plates they ride on drift a few centimeters a year, about as fast as fingernails grow. Around 300 million years ago, all of today's continents were joined in one supercontinent, Pangaea. If you look at the map in Learn mode, you can still see how the bulge of Brazil would fit into the curve of West Africa. That observation, made by the scientist Alfred Wegener more than a hundred years ago, was one of the first clues to plate tectonics.

Continents and oceans for different ages

• Kindergarten and 1st grade. Learn mode with Names on, then Drag labels in Practice. Say each name out loud as you place it.
• 2nd and 3rd grade. Multiple choice and Click the map in Practice, then the timed Quiz. Add the continents and oceans worksheet as a weekly check.
• 4th grade and up. Typing in the timed Quiz, then the 60-second Challenge. When it's easy, move on to countries.

Songs, stories and tricks for remembering

Young children learn the continents fastest with movement and repetition:

1. Sing them. Many classroom songs list the seven continents to a familiar tune. Sing while pointing to each one on the map in Learn mode.
2. Use the "A" trick. Five continents start and end with the same letter A: Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia and America (North and South). Europe is the odd one out.
3. Find home first. Start with the continent you live on, then the ocean you'd cross to reach another one.
4. Go big to small. Asia is biggest, then Africa. Australia is smallest. Children like rankings, and the Learn cards show each one's size.
5. Make it physical. Point to the continents on a globe or a beach ball globe, then find them again on the flat map. Seeing that the map wraps around helps explain why the Pacific shows up on both sides.
6. Finish on paper. The continents and oceans worksheet has the same map with a word bank and an answer key.

What comes next

Once the continents and oceans are easy, children are ready for countries. The South America map quiz (12 countries) is a friendly first continent, and the world map quiz brings everything together. The blank world map lets children label countries freely. For curious young explorers, monthly geography subscriptions and kids' magazines like the ones below make the continents feel real.