Back to School
This fall tradition welcomes former students “home.”
What is homecoming?
At high school and college football games, this ensemble often supplies the halftime soundtrack.
What is a marching band?
Halloween is a shortened form of this name.
What is All Hallows’ Eve?
Each fall, these orange-and-black butterflies travel as far as 3,000 miles to warmer wintering grounds.
What are monarch butterflies?
This 1951 comic helped establish trick-or-treating in American pop culture.
What is Peanuts?
School begins in January or February in this country and continent.
What is Australia?
This league’s season begins each fall with 32 teams chasing the Stanley Cup.
What is the National Hockey League (NHL)?
This word describes leaf-shedding trees and baby teeth.
What is deciduous?
Squirrels bury nuts in scattered locations during fall to create these winter food stores.
What are caches?
Irish immigrants originally carved these instead of pumpkins.
What are turnips?
Teaching at this university expanded after Henry II barred English students from attending the University of Paris in 1167.
What is the University of Oxford?
This rival league began play in 1960 and merged with the NFL.
What is the American Football League?
Before “fall” or “autumn,” English speakers called the season this.
What is harvest?
Closely associated with Halloween, this animal can symbolize bad luck in American folklore but good luck in some British traditions.
What is a black cat?
The first corn maze designed as a large-scale public attraction opened in Pennsylvania during this decade.
What are the 1990s?
Fun Fact: The first opened in Pennsylvania in 1993, hosted by Lebanon Valley College.
This homeschooling approach follows a child’s interests without a fixed curriculum.
What is unschooling?
Northwestern won back-to-back NCAA titles in this women’s fall sport in 2024 and 2025.
What is field hockey?
This older English phrase gave Americans the word “fall.”
What is fall of the leaf?
Shorter autumn days trigger this Western hare to trade its brown coat for white winter camouflage.
What is the snowshoe hare?
Congress chose November elections partly to accommodate these workers.
Who are farmers?
This process replaced many one-room schools with larger districts.
What is school consolidation?
Although “pigskin” remains its nickname, the pebbled leather traditionally used for modern footballs comes from this animal.
What is a cow?
Unlike in the US, ordering “cider” without this American modifier generally gets you an alcoholic drink in the UK.
What is hard?
Iowa’s state bird trades its bright-yellow feathers for duller ones each fall.
What is the American goldfinch?
This medieval custom exchanged prayers for small “soul cakes.”
What is souling?