An eagle, a flamingo and a parrot, with their Danish names

ØRN is three letters long and means eagle, which children rarely believe at first. It is the shortest word in the grid and, oddly enough, often one of the last to be spotted. The rest are longer and easier to see coming: PELIKAN, FLAMINGO, PAPEGØJE (parrot), PINGVIN and UGLE. A picture is printed with each, so the meaning never has to be guessed at.

These are zoo birds rather than garden ones, and three of them barely shift between the two languages — FLAMINGO is identical, PELIKAN and PINGVIN differ by a letter or two. Point that out and a whole language stops looking closed. PAPEGØJE is the one to practise aloud instead; the Ø sitting in the middle is a sound English does without, and far easier to hear than to describe.

A zoo trip or an afternoon at an aquarium gives these words somewhere to land, so print it the day before. It also holds up on its own as ten quiet minutes at a kitchen table with a pencil. Six words is the right length for one sitting — enough to feel like a real puzzle, short enough that a child finishes it and remembers what was in it.