Two of these Finnish animal words your child can already read

PANDA is PANDA in Finnish, and GORILLA is GORILLA. A child opening this sheet can therefore find two words before knowing any Finnish at all, which is a kinder start than most vocabulary pages manage. After that it gets properly Finnish: KIRAHVI is a giraffe, HYLJE a seal, LEPAKKO a bat, and VYÖTIÄINEN — the longest word here by a distance — is an armadillo.

VYÖTIÄINEN is the one to plan for. It runs to ten letters and contains a vowel pair, YÖ, that English never puts together. Rather than reading it letter by letter in the grid, suggest your child look for that VYÖ opening and follow the line wherever it goes. KIRAHVI is easier than it looks once a child hears it aloud; it is very nearly the English word with a Finnish accent laid over the top. HYLJE and LEPAKKO sit somewhere between the two extremes.

Print it before a zoo visit and the words travel with you, or afterwards, when the animals are still fresh and a name will attach itself to a memory rather than to a drawing. Nothing here is timed or marked. Six animals is enough for one sheet; if your child wants to keep going, the picture list makes a perfectly good drawing prompt once every word has been circled.