Three of these six French space words carry an accent — and that is where children slip

Space words are among the first a child asks for, and these six cover the basics: the sun, the moon, the Earth, a rocket, a comet and a meteor. Each has a picture on the list and a hiding place in the grid. The child looks along the rows and down the columns for the letters of SOLEIL or LUNE, then draws a ring round them. Nothing is spelled out; the work is all in the looking.

The accents are what to prepare for. COMÈTE, FUSÉE and MÉTÉORE all carry one, and MÉTÉORE carries two — a child hunting for a plain string of letters will pass over them repeatedly. LUNE and TERRE are four and five letters, plain and quick, but short words hide well in a busy grid, so they are not always the first found. Say them once together and the accents stop being invisible.

This is a good one for a rainy evening, or for the week a class is doing the solar system in English — the two lessons prop each other up. An adult with no French can still run it: read the picture names, let the child match and search, then check the circles at the end. Six words takes most children about a quarter of an hour.