From PENNA to the twelve-letter RACCOGLITORE: the Italian classroom

The Italian classroom, hidden in letters. Pictures of a pen, a stapler, a backpack, a table, a globe and a binder tell your child what to hunt for: PENNA, CUCITRICE, ZAINO, TAVOLO, MAPPAMONDO and RACCOGLITORE. That last one runs to twelve letters, so it needs a slow scan along the rows rather than a hopeful glance at the whole page. Six words in all, hidden across and down.

These are working words, the ones a child would actually need in an Italian classroom. MAPPAMONDO is lovely to unpack: mappa and mondo, a map of the world, which is exactly what a globe is. ZAINO is short and immediately useful. CUCITRICE, the stapler, comes from the verb meaning to sew, because a stapler stitches sheets of paper together. Each of the six is a thing your child can point at in a real room.

Good for the start of a term, or for a child about to spend time in an Italian-speaking school. Tuck the finished sheet inside a pencil case and the words stay in sight all day. PENNA is normally found within seconds; RACCOGLITORE takes real patience, and finding it deserves a bit of ceremony. Print it as often as you need, at no cost. There is no timer and no score anywhere on the page.