Animal criss-cross puzzle

Animals are the right subject for a first criss-cross, because the spelling is already secure. A child who has to work out both where TIGER goes and how TIGER is spelled is doing two hard things at once and will give up on the puzzle. When the word is known, the whole of the attention goes to the fitting, which is the skill this puzzle is actually teaching.

The list also has the length spread the interlock needs. CAT and BAT are three letters, ELEPHANT and HEDGEHOG are eight, and a grid built from that mixture has room to breathe: long words running the height of the page with short ones hanging off them. A list where every word is six letters produces a cramped grid and a duller puzzle, which is worth knowing if you paste in your own.

Start with the ten-word starter for a five to seven year old. The jump to fourteen is bigger than it looks, because the number of intersections grows faster than the number of words, and a child who breezed through the first sheet will slow down noticeably on the second. That is the sheet to give them next rather than the twenty-word one.

It pairs well with the animal word search on this site. Same list, different demand: the search lets you match letters you can see, and the criss-cross makes you produce them. Running the search first and the criss-cross a week later is a real step up rather than the same exercise twice.