The Italian names for six vegetables, waiting to be found

Six vegetables, named in Italian and hidden across and down in a block of letters. FUNGO is a mushroom, ZUCCA a pumpkin, CETRIOLO a cucumber, RAVANELLO a radish, MELANZANA an aubergine and ASPARAGO asparagus. The picture list does the translating, so your child's whole job is to read the grid until each word appears and then draw a ring round it. Nothing here has to be spelled from memory.

Two of these are close enough to English to be guessed at — ASPARAGO, and CETRIOLO if you have met 'cucumber' in any Romance language. The other four have to be learned outright. That mix is useful: a child gets a couple of quick wins, then has to work for MELANZANA and RAVANELLO, which are nine letters each and the likeliest to be left until last. Longer words are easier to see, so that order works out well.

Cooking is where these words earn their keep, so print this before a shopping trip or a Saturday of chopping. ZUCCA is the short one at five letters and the one children miss; it also turns up in zucchina, which is worth a mention. Say the ZUCCA C hard, like a k, and the CETRIOLO C soft — that single rule covers most Italian spelling questions a beginner will ask.