SOLEIL, BALEINE and a three-letter island hiding by the sea

This grid hides six French words for things you meet at the coast: SOLEIL for the sun, BALEINE for a whale, POISSON for a fish, PÉLICAN, TUBA for a snorkel, and ÎLE for an island. A picture sits beside each one, so the meaning is settled before the search begins and the child's whole job is recognising the written French among the letters. Beach vocabulary works well as a first set: a child has usually seen every one of these.

ÎLE is the hard one, and not because it is difficult French. It is three letters long, so it can sit almost anywhere in the grid and be read straight past. Children who find the long words quickly often stall on it. TUBA is the other surprise: it looks like the brass instrument, but here it names the snorkel in the picture. Both accents, in ÎLE and PÉLICAN, are printed in the grid too.

Use it before a holiday, or alongside anything else about the sea, when a child already knows a few French nouns by ear and needs to meet them in print. Say the six aloud first — SOLEIL and POISSON are worth hearing before hunting for them. If a child gets stuck, say how many words are left rather than where. Finding the last one is the part they will remember.