How does she feel? Six Dutch words for it

Naming a chair is easy; naming a feeling is not, in any language. This sheet takes six Dutch feeling words and gives each one a face to hold on to: BLIJ for happy, BOOS for cross, VERDRIETIG for sad, VERLEGEN for shy, VERVEELD for bored and WALGEND for disgusted. Your child reads the face, finds the matching word in the letter grid, and circles it. The picture does the translating, so no adult has to hover.

Three of the six start with ver-, which slows the hunt down usefully: VERDRIETIG, VERLEGEN and VERVEELD all look alike at a glance, so a child has to read past the first three letters before committing to a circle. BOOS is worth flagging separately, because it looks as though it should mean something English and does not — it is plain, ordinary angry.

Feeling words earn their place early because a child needs them before they need most nouns. Use the sheet as a starting point rather than the whole lesson: once the six are circled, go back through the faces and ask which one your child felt this morning. That conversation, in halting Dutch, is where the words actually settle. Print it free, take as long as you like, and score nothing.