What are your toys called in Dutch?

Ask a child to name their favourite toy and they do it without thinking. Ask for the Dutch word and there is a pause — which is the gap this sheet quietly fills. Six toys are pictured down the side, each with its Dutch name printed underneath, and those same six words are hidden in the grid beside them, running across, down and diagonally. Six is a manageable number for a first attempt.

POP is three letters and means doll, and it is the sort of word that sticks after one meeting. FIETS, the bicycle, is the one children tend to remember longest, probably because it sounds nothing like anything they already know. VLIEGTUIG, the aeroplane, comes apart neatly into vlieg, fly, and tuig, gear. SCHOMMEL, the swing, is hardest to spot, partly for that run of consonants at the front and partly because the eye slides straight past it.

Fifteen minutes is about right, and it needs no supervision once the child understands that the pictures name the words. It works best when the words get said afterwards; EMMER, the bucket, is much easier to keep hold of once it has been out loud a few times. No timer, no marks, and an answer page at the back for the words that refuse to appear.