Owl, crow, sparrow — the Danish names for birds you meet

Ask a class to name a bird and somebody will say owl. In Danish that is UGLE, and it is here in the grid alongside KRAGE (crow), SPURV (sparrow), HEJRE (heron), KYLLING (chicken) and STRUDS (ostrich). Each bird is pictured beside the puzzle. The children match the picture to its Danish word, then hunt through the rows and columns and circle whatever they find.

Five of the six are birds a child could genuinely run into — in a garden, on a pond, on a farm — which makes the words repeatable rather than merely decorative. STRUDS is the outlier and earns its place by being the one everybody wants to find first. UGLE and KRAGE are short enough to catch on a first pass; HEJRE and KYLLING ask for a bit more looking. SPURV ends in a consonant pair English never puts together, so let them hunt for its shape rather than say it first.

A nature table or a bird-watching week is the obvious home for it, and a set costs nothing to print. Read each word once before they start — the g in UGLE is soft, almost swallowed, which children find surprising in a way that helps them remember it. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored; the page is done when the last bird has been ringed.