A duck and its duckling, five letters apart in Italian

Two of the six answers are relatives. ANATRA is the duck and ANATROCCOLO is the duckling, the same word with a long ending fixed on the back of it. Both sit in the grid, so a child who finds the short one has to keep reading rather than stop. The other four are GUFO the owl, BUE the ox, CAVALLO the horse and TACCHINO the turkey.

BUE has three letters and hides beautifully. It turns up by accident inside longer strings, so it rewards a careful check against the picture list before anything is circled. ANATROCCOLO, at eleven letters, asks for the opposite habit: your child is looking for a long shape rather than reading a string. Everything else on the sheet sits between those two extremes. Reading a whole row aloud, letter by letter, is a reasonable way in when a word refuses to appear.

Farm animals are usually the first set a child meets in a new language, so this often works as an early sheet rather than a test of anything. Say the six aloud before starting. The doubled consonants in CAVALLO and TACCHINO are genuinely held when an Italian says them, and hearing that once helps a child trust the spelling in front of them. They travel well to a farm park, too.