Your child hunts down the French words for a day at the beach

This sheet gathers what a child takes to the sea. Pictures of a bucket, a seashell, a crab and a swimming pool tell your child which six French words are hidden in the grid, and the task is to find each one and ring it. SEAU is four letters and easy to skim past; COQUILLAGE runs to ten and is hard to miss at all. The picture list means nobody has to translate anything before the pencil comes out.

PARAPLUIE rewards a closer look. It is built from PLUIE, rain, with PARA in front of it, so the word means roughly "against the rain". Pointing that out turns a long string of letters into two pieces a child can hold on to, even for a child only a few weeks into French. Everything here names a thing rather than an action, which keeps the search concrete for a beginner.

Keep it for the week before a holiday, or for a wet afternoon when the beach feels a long way off. Because nothing is timed, a child can put it down and come back for the last two words later. One sheet is easily enough for a single sitting. Reading PISCINE and then saying it is a useful pairing — written and spoken French part company more often than English does.