What's on the Dutch desk: six words to find

Your child already knows every object on this sheet; what is new is the Dutch name for it. BOEK is the book, GUM is the eraser, ORDNER is the ring binder, SCHRIFT is the exercise book, REKENMACHINE is the calculator and WHITEBOARD is exactly what it looks like. All six are hidden in the letter grid, across and down, waiting to be found and circled.

Two of them will catch an English speaker out. GUM is not chewing gum, it is the rubber on the end of a pencil case; SCHRIFT is not handwriting, it is the exercise book itself. WHITEBOARD, meanwhile, has been borrowed whole from English and needs no learning at all. REKENMACHINE gives the opposite pleasure: rekenen means to do sums, so a calculator in Dutch is plainly a sum-machine.

Because these are the objects on the table in front of you, the sheet works well as a first Dutch lesson of the day. Hand it out, let the hunt take five minutes, then walk round the room touching the real boek, the real gum, the real whiteboard and naming each. What the grid made your child read carefully, the room makes them say aloud. Free to print, and worth repeating a week later.