KUH, HUHN, HAHN — three German farm words that look alike

This is the shortest word list on the German shelf and, oddly, one of the more awkward. KUH is three letters. HUHN, HAHN and HENNE are a chicken, a rooster and a hen, and they share so many letters that a child scanning at speed will circle the wrong one and be quite sure it was right. ESEL, the donkey, and KATZE, the cat, are the two that come without a fight.

That muddle is the lesson rather than a flaw in the puzzle. Ask your child to check the vowel before circling: HUHN has a U in the middle, HAHN an A, and the two are otherwise identical. HENNE is the long one, five letters with a double N. Reading a word to its end instead of guessing from its opening is a habit that repays itself in every language, German included.

Use it after a farm visit or a picture book, while the animals are still in mind. Each of these words takes a capital letter wherever it sits in a German sentence — die Kuh, der Esel — so the grid is showing them much as they really look. Print it, let your child work at whatever pace suits, and check the circles together at the end rather than as they go.