A bear, a moose and an owl, all under their German names

Six creatures, six German names, and a pleasing spread of lengths: BÄR is three letters, ELCH and EULE four apiece, REGENWURM nine. The pictures show a bear, a moose, an owl, a toad, a beaver and an earthworm, so a child who has met none of the words can still work out which belongs to which before a single letter gets circled.

REGENWURM is the one to linger over. It is two words pushed together — regen, rain, and wurm, worm — and German builds a great many of its nouns this way. Once a child sees that the long word is only two short ones, it stops looking forbidding and becomes the quickest thing on the page to spot. KRÖTE and BÄR carry umlauts, and those two dots belong to the letter.

Read all six aloud before the pencil comes out. EULE has two syllables, roughly oy-luh, and a child guessing from English spelling rarely lands anywhere near. Print it alongside a woodland walk or a story with animals in it. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored — the point is that six German words get looked at closely enough to stay put. Ask for them back the next morning and you will soon hear which of the six actually landed.