From a four-letter boat to a ten-letter bicycle

VENE, a boat, is four letters. POLKUPYÖRÄ, a bicycle, is ten. Both are on this sheet, and the gap between them is useful: a beginner finds VENE almost at once and goes into the harder hunt already feeling capable. The other four are NUKKE the doll, LAPIO the spade, ÄMPÄRI the bucket and NALLEKARHU the teddy bear, each drawn beside the grid.

What a child actually does here is match a picture to a written word, then locate that word among letters that are trying to look like it. That is recognition practice rather than sounding out, and for a language met in short doses it is the part that sticks. Expect ÄMPÄRI to cause a pause — the two dots over the A change the sound, and children often skim past it first time round.

This works as a sit-quietly sheet at the end of a session, or as something to take in the car. Nothing on it is marked and nothing is timed, so a half-done grid is still a perfectly good afternoon's work. When the last word is circled the pictures are still there to talk about: which toy your child would take to a friend's house, whether the spade or the bucket gets used more often, and whether anyone can say NALLEKARHU without laughing.