The rabbit is LAPIN and the mouse is SOURIS — now find them in the grid

Pets are the first vocabulary most children actually want, because they can use it on an animal in the room. This grid hides the French for a rabbit, a mouse, a tortoise, a ferret, a lizard and an iguana. The pictures sit alongside, so the child is never guessing at meaning — only searching the letters for LAPIN, TORTUE and the rest. Reading across the rows and down the columns is the whole of it.

LÉZARD is the one to watch. It carries an accent on the second letter, and a child who has learned the word by ear will often look for it without one and decide it is not there. IGUANE is the opposite problem: it is so close to the English that children stop reading after the first three letters and miss the different ending. Say both aloud before starting and the trouble largely goes away.

Print it and leave it where the pet lives — beside the hutch, the tank, the cage. A child who finds SOURIS on Tuesday and then says it at the cage on Wednesday has done the thing the sheet exists for. FURET and LAPIN, at five letters each, are the quickest finds, so either makes a good opener for a child who needs one win before settling in.