Garden minibeasts in Dutch — six words to track down

Turn over a stone in the garden and half this word list crawls out. MIER is the ant, RUPS the caterpillar, NAAKTSLAK the slug, LIBEL the dragonfly, KREKEL the cricket and VLINDER the butterfly. Each one has its picture on the sheet; each one is buried somewhere in the block of letters, running across or downwards, and your child's job is to find it and draw a ring.

NAAKTSLAK is worth a moment of conversation. It means, quite literally, the naked snail — which is exactly what a slug is — and children tend to hold on to a word once they know why it says what it says. VLINDER and LIBEL are short enough to spot quickly, MIER shortest of all, so a beginner gets moving well before meeting anything difficult.

Pair it with an afternoon outdoors if you can: hunt the real thing first, then hunt the words. It also fills the gap on a rainy day when going out is off the table. Nothing on the sheet is timed or scored, so there is no pressure to finish in one sitting. Ask afterwards which one your child would least like to find in a shoe — NAAKTSLAK usually wins, and the word sticks.