The Print Room · Word search

Animals Word Search

Twenty-one animals are hiding in this grid, and they come from every corner of the map — an ELEPHANT and a GIRAFFE from the savanna, a PENGUIN from the ice, a KOALA and a KANGAROO from Australia, and a sneaky three-letter FOX that is usually the last one found. The words run across, down and along the diagonals, so a finished sheet means a genuine sweep of the whole grid rather than a lucky skim.

This is the puzzle we hand people first. Animal names are vocabulary kids already own, so the sheet works from about second grade up: young solvers get the thrill of recognising words they can actually read, while older ones still have to dig for CHEETAH threading through other answers. It suits a classroom fast-finisher folder, a waiting room and a rainy Saturday equally well.

One tip worth passing on: start with the longest names. ELEPHANT and KANGAROO carry so many letters that they are easier to spot than the short words, and once they are circled they carve the grid into smaller regions where LION, WOLF and FOX have far fewer places left to hide.