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.
CAPS links
- Grade RMatches words to pictures in print, for example through word-picture puzzles.
- Grade 1Reads labels and captions in the classroom and words from environmental print.
- Grade 2Plays reading games and completes crosswords to reinforce reading and vocabulary.
Matching words to pictures is named in the Grade R CAPS for the fourth term, so the matching page and the picture word search suit the end of Grade R and Grade 1.
Choose word sets that suit the South African year: animals, the farm, fruit and food, under the sea and space work in any term. In an English or Afrikaans First Additional Language class, the pictures carry the meaning while children learn the new word.
Summarised in our own words from the DBE’s CAPS for English Home Language, Foundation Phase Grades R–3 (2011).
