A starfish, a kite and an ice cream, all wearing their Dutch names

IJS is the word that stops children on this sheet. Two letters, meaning ice cream, and both of them capital in the grid — because Dutch treats IJ as a single letter and writes it that way. A child hunting for it has to accept a spelling rule English never taught them, and they accept it happily, because there is a picture of an ice cream sitting right beside the word.

The rest of the grid rewards patience. ZEESTER is sea plus star, which is a tidier way of saying starfish than English manages. DRIJFHOUT is drift plus wood. ROTS is a rock, NET is a net and needs no translation at all. Six words, four of them describing things a child can carry home from a real beach, all hidden across and down among letters that look almost but not quite like the answer.

Take it on holiday. It fits in a bag, needs only a pencil and works on a ferry, in a caravan or at a campsite table on a wet morning. Teachers running a seaside topic can print it as a five-minute settler and then send children off to find the same six things in a picture book. The Dutch words are short enough to say aloud confidently by the end of one sitting.