Half these Italian words are ones your child already knows

Three of these six are almost free. COBRA and IGUANA are spelled exactly as they are in English, and GECO is the gecko with a single letter's difference. That leaves CAMALEONTE and SALAMANDRA, ten letters each, to do the real work, plus RANA, the frog, sitting in four letters where hardly anyone thinks to look. Six words in all, and the pictures beside the grid settle which creature is which.

The pictures say which creature is which, so your child is never guessing at meaning and all the effort goes into the scanning. Suggest working from the long words outwards. A ten-letter answer crosses a good part of the grid and is easier to catch than it looks, once a child stops reading letter by letter and starts watching for shapes. COBRA is five letters and gets overlooked precisely because it looks so familiar.

Use it in a topic on cold-blooded animals, or the day after a reptile house. The C in CAMALEONTE is hard, so the word opens like kamaleonte, and COBRA behaves the same way — two chances on one page to practise a rule Italian applies everywhere. Circle at whatever speed suits; there is no clock printed on the page. Leave it out and let it be finished across two sittings if that suits better.