Which letters spell AQUILA? Six Italian bird names to track down

Six Italian bird names, and pictures of the birds to match them to: an eagle, a pelican, a peacock, an owl. Your child looks for AQUILA, PELLICANO, PAVONE, GUFO, TUCANO and PINGUINO, and circles each one as it turns up. GUFO is the shortest at four letters and often the hardest to catch, because short words tuck themselves neatly into the filler.

Bird names make good early vocabulary, because a child already knows the creatures and only the label is new. Several here are close to English — PELLICANO, TUCANO and PINGUINO announce themselves the moment you look properly. AQUILA is worth saying aloud, with the stress on the first syllable, ah-kwee-lah; it is the Latin word behind the English aquiline. Four of the six end in -o, which in Italian usually marks a masculine noun.

Use it beside a picture book, or after a walk where birds were actually about. A good order is: name the bird in English, say the Italian, then hunt. Children who rush tend to miss PAVONE, which sits quietly among similar letters. When the grid is finished, cover the list and ask which Italian names they can still recall — usually more than you expect. Six words is a comfortable number for one sitting, and there is nothing to score.