Six toy words in Italian, and a grid to dig them out of

Six toys, six Italian words, one grid of letters. PALLA is the ball, TRENO the train, CAMION a truck, SCIVOLO a slide, AQUILONE a kite and RAZZO a rocket. Your child looks at the picture, finds the word that names it somewhere in the block of letters, and rings it. Reading across and down is all the searching involves, and the list rules out any guessing. It is a short sheet, six words in all.

These are words a child will actually use, which is why a toy sheet tends to stick better than a list of abstract nouns. A word met during play comes back. PALLA carries the doubled L that Italian is full of, held a beat longer than an English one, and RAZZO does the same with its Z — a sharp, doubled ts sound that English never quite makes.

Use it at the point where a child is bored with flashcards but still happy to hunt. The one that causes trouble is CAMION, which is not pronounced as an English reader expects — the final syllable is closer to 'own' than 'on'. AQUILONE is eight letters and the longest here, so it is a sensible one to find first while the grid still looks new and the eye is fresh.