Fruit your child already knows, spelled the German way

ANANAS is the surprise here. It means pineapple, and a child expecting something close to the English word will hunt for entirely the wrong letters. The rest behave themselves: BANANE is a banana with an E on the end, ZITRONE a lemon, APRIKOSE an apricot, KIWI simply KIWI, and HIMBEERE, at eight letters, a raspberry. Six words, six pictures, one grid.

Food words tend to stick, because a child uses them the same week they meet them. Look at each picture, say the German aloud, then search. HIMBEERE rewards a slow reader in particular: beere is the German for berry and turns up at the end of half the soft fruit there is, so noticing that ending once makes the next berry word easier to hold on to.

The words run across and down, and the picture list means nobody needs to remember what they are looking for. Print it for a lunchbox lesson or a rainy Saturday morning. In a German sentence each of these keeps its capital letter — die Banane, die Zitrone — so the capitals in the grid are not only puzzle convention; they are how the words genuinely appear. Say them back over lunch the same day and you will hear at once which of them have taken hold.