Three instrument words your child can guess, and three they cannot

Some of these Italian words a child can almost guess. CHITARRA is the guitar, TROMBA the trumpet, SASSOFONO the saxophone — close enough to English that the pictures barely need explaining. Let your child work those three out unaided before the search starts. Being right about a foreign word is a good feeling to open with, and it steadies the rest. The remaining pictures give the game away soon enough anyway.

The other three give nothing away. TASTIERA is the keyboard, TAMBURO the drum, PIATTI the cymbals — and PIATTI is also the everyday Italian word for plates, which is worth mentioning when the cymbals turn up in the picture strip. Your child reads across and down the grid until the letters spell one of the six, then rings it. None of the six runs past nine letters, so the grid never feels punishing.

Print it for a child starting an instrument, or beside a lesson where the names will be said aloud anyway. The CH in CHITARRA is the trap: in Italian that is a hard K sound, so the word opens like kitarra rather than like church. Say it that way once and the spelling stops looking odd on the page. Print a second copy if a sibling is hovering; these words are worth meeting twice.