German kitchen words, from MESSER to MIKROWELLE

TIMER is the one your child already knows: German borrowed it from English with the spelling intact, and it sits in the grid looking entirely at home. The other five need learning — MESSER a knife, PFANNE a pan, KOCHTOPF a saucepan, SCHWAMM a sponge, and MIKROWELLE, ten letters, a microwave. All six come with pictures, so nothing has to be translated first.

KOCHTOPF is the one to unpick: koch, cook, and topf, pot. A cooking pot. Once a child has taken two or three joined-up German nouns apart, they start doing it by instinct, which makes the grid quicker and everything after the grid quicker too. PFANNE opens with a PF that English never puts at the start of a word, and it is worth saying aloud a few times before the search.

This is a sheet to do in the room it describes. Print it, sit at the kitchen table, and let your child point at the real pan and the real sponge as each word turns up in the letters. Nothing is timed and nothing is scored; the aim is only that six German words get read closely enough to be recognised the next time they appear. Six words, one kitchen drawer, and about ten minutes of quiet.