A snowy letter grid with SKI, GLACE and BOTTES hiding in it

Six French words sit hidden in a grid of letters, and a small picture beside each one tells your child what to look for. Boots, ice, an icicle, a pair of skis: the pictures do the translating, so a child who has never studied French can still work out that BOTTES belongs with the boots and SKI with the skier. Six words is enough for a proper hunt, and few enough that nobody gives up. Finding one is the moment its spelling starts to stick.

Circling STALACTITE takes patience. Ten letters is a long chain to trace through a crowded grid, and it is the word most children leave until last. CONIFÈRE carries a grave accent on its second e, printed in the grid exactly as it appears in the word list, so your child learns early that French accents belong to the spelling rather than decorating it.

Print it before a snowy afternoon, or slip it into a travel folder. Most children work through it alone once the pictures have been talked over, though it helps to say each word aloud together first: GLACE sounds nothing like an English eye expects, and hearing it once makes the letters far easier to recognise on the page afterwards. It is a ten-minute job, not an afternoon's.