Not a cat or a dog here — the quieter pets, named in Italian

Not a cat or a dog in sight. The pets on this sheet are the quieter kind: the rabbit, the mouse, the frog, the tortoise, the lizard and the iguana, with their Italian names hidden in the grid alongside. CONIGLIO is the rabbit, TOPO the mouse. Your child reads through the letters and draws a ring round each word found. Nothing here needs sounding out from scratch, which is what makes the sheet manageable this early.

Length varies more here than on most sheets. TOPO and RANA are four letters apiece and go quickly; TARTARUGA and LUCERTOLA are nine each and need real scanning. Let your child clear the short pair first. The grid feels much less crowded afterwards, and confidence banked early is what carries them through the long ones. RANA, the frog, turns up on the reptile sheet as well, so it repays learning properly here.

IGUANA is spelled the same in both languages, so it is a gift. The one to say aloud is CONIGLIO: the GLI in the middle makes a sound English has no letter for, nearer the lli of million than anything with a hard G. Print this before a trip to a pet shop, or for a child currently campaigning for a rabbit. Either way the words get said out loud, which is rather the point.