The IJ that starts an icicle

The first thing a child asks about this sheet is the IJ at the start of IJSPEGEL. In Dutch those two letters travel together as a single sound, close to the vowel in 'eye', and both take a capital when a word begins with them. IJSPEGEL is ijs plus pegel — ice and peg — which is a fair enough description of an icicle.

The rest is friendlier. TRUI is a jumper, four letters a child can hold onto straight away. HUT is a cabin, and short enough to be genuinely hard to find, hiding easily in a crowded row. LAARZEN, the boots, carries that -en plural ending again, and SCHOP is a spade. Every word is printed under a picture of the thing itself, so no translating is needed; the task is purely to look.

It is a cold-weather sheet in the obvious sense, and it earns its place in the long indoor stretch of a winter term when something quiet is wanted. Twenty minutes at most, and less once a child has the hang of it. Print it, hand over a pencil, and let them find the words in whatever order they like — the six can be circled in any sequence. The answer grid follows, and nothing here is scored.