The French names for six different ways of getting somewhere

An ambulance, a helicopter, a rocket, a canoe, a ferry, a van — the pictures set out six ways of travelling, and their French names are hidden in the letter grid. Your child searches row by row and circles each one on sight. AMBULANCE is spelled just as it is in English and usually gets found first. The picture beside each word says what is wanted, so no dictionary is needed, and six of them is a sensible amount for one sitting.

CAMIONNETTE takes the longest. It is eleven letters, and it is CAMION, a lorry, with ETTE tacked on the end to shrink it: a little lorry, a van. French makes small things this way all the time, and noticing it once here means a child recognises the same trick somewhere else later on. CANOË and FERRY, both short, tend to fall out of the grid early.

Save this for a long journey, or for the evening before one. HÉLICOPTÈRE and FUSÉE carry accents your child may not have met yet — say them aloud rather than explaining what the marks do. The pictures work as the answer key, so a child in the back seat can check their own page unaided. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored, so a slow search is fine.