How it works
- Pick a word set, such as animals, the farm or Halloween.
- Leave out any words you don’t want by tapping them.
- Tick the puzzles you want, and choose a theme for the page border.
- Download one PDF with every puzzle, then the answer keys at the back.
Why pictures help early readers
A picture tells a child what the word means before they can read it. Matching the picture to the word, finding it letter by letter in a grid and writing it in crossword squares all make children look closely at the letters of a word they already understand. That is how new words start to stick.
Four puzzles from one word set
Picture word search
The word bank shows each word with its picture. Words run across, down or diagonally, never backwards.
Match the pictures
Pictures on one side, words on the other, in a different order. Children draw a line from dot to dot.
Picture crossword
Each numbered clue is a picture. Children say the word, then write one letter in each square.
Colour and trace
A big outline picture to colour, its word to trace, and an empty line to write it alone.
NCF and NCERT links
- UKGNIPUN Bharat expects Balvatika children to read simple words of two or three letters.
- VocabularyThe NCF-FS wants children to know enough words for daily life and to guess new words from ones they know (C-9.7).
- Class 1NCERT’s Class 1 English book, Mridang, has units on family, life around us, food and seasons, which match several word sets here.
Pictures let children work with English words before they can read them, which suits the NCF-FS approach of building spoken vocabulary in a second language before reading it. Say each word aloud with the class before the puzzle.
Some word sets, such as fall and Halloween, are Western. The animals, farm, fruit and food, sea, transport and space sets fit Indian classrooms all year.
Summarised in our own words from the National Curriculum Framework for Foundational Stage (NCERT, 2022), the NIPUN Bharat guidelines (Ministry of Education, 2021) and NCERT’s Mridang textbook.
