Long Dutch words for big machines

VRACHTWAGEN is the word to start with, because it shows what Dutch does. Vracht is freight and wagen is wagon, so a lorry becomes a freight-wagon: one long word doing the work of two. It is also the longest thing in the grid, which makes it, oddly enough, among the easier finds on the page.

ONDERZEEËR, the submarine, comes apart the same way — onder is under and zee is sea. The two dots over that second e are a diaeresis; they tell a Dutch reader to start a fresh syllable instead of running the vowels together, and children nearly always want to know what they are for. BOOT is the shortest word here, four letters for a boat, and it can be surprisingly stubborn to locate. METRO and JEEP need no translating at all, and both are usually gone within the first minute.

Keep this one for a child who has already worked through a couple of these puzzles, since two of the six words run past ten letters. Read the list aloud together before starting: long words are far easier to spot once the ear has heard them. Print as many copies as a class needs. The answers sit on the following page, and nothing on the sheet is scored or timed.