Sending something in German: six post-office words to find

This sheet takes a child through an errand. The pictures show a letter, a package, the scale on the counter, the truck, the postman and the building itself, and every one has its German name hidden in the grid. BRIEF is the letter and PAKET the parcel. WAAGE is the scale, LASTWAGEN the truck, POSTAMT the post office, POSTMAN the man who brings it. Find them across and down, then circle.

BRIEF is the word to talk about. It looks like an English word a child may already half know, and it means something else entirely: a letter, not something short. Words that look familiar and are not are exactly the ones learners keep getting wrong for years, so meeting one early, with a picture sitting beside it, does real good. PAKET and POSTAMT, by contrast, give themselves away.

Print it before or after a real trip to post something, because the words attach far better to an actual parcel than to a page. Two small snags. WAAGE has two a's side by side, which English almost never does, and children read past it. LASTWAGEN is nine letters and arrives in two pieces, LAST for load and WAGEN for wagon, so finding the first half means the rest can be trusted.