Twelve letters of PAMPLEMOUSSE reach right across the grid

Six fruits are pictured — a banana, a fig, an apricot, a blueberry, a pomegranate and a grapefruit — each with its French name printed next to it, and each name concealed in the grid. Your child pairs the picture with the word, then scans the rows and columns until the letters line up and circles them. Nothing has to be sounded out cold, so the sheet suits a real beginner.

BANANE and FIGUE sit so close to English that a child reads them almost by accident, which is a good way to start. The long ones then carry the interest. PAMPLEMOUSSE, the grapefruit, is twelve letters and takes up most of a row on its own. GRENADE is the pomegranate — and yes, the same word does duty for a grenade, which children find memorable for reasons of their own.

Print it before a shop, or leave it beside a fruit bowl with the real things in it, so the words are being matched to something a child can hold. The likely sticking point is MYRTILLE, the blueberry: eight letters with a double L in the middle, and easy to abandon halfway. Suggest they hunt for the pair of Ls first, then read outwards from that pair in both directions.