Eighteen New Year words in a 13 by 13 grid with the list underneath: countdown and resolution words rather than party ones. Big Ben, chimes, confetti, firework, Hogmanay, January, midnight, promise and wishes are all in the grid the page opens on.
A list about the turn of the year
The pool is built round what people do at New Year rather than round a party: resolutions, goals, a fresh start, a new diary, a calendar going up on a wall. That makes it a sheet a school can hand out on the first day back without reading it through first.
Several entries are British and Scottish, and those are the ones adults enjoy finding: Hogmanay, first footing, Auld Lang Syne, and Big Ben for the chimes at midnight. A child who has not met first footing usually asks what it is, which is more than most word searches manage.
Short grid, long grid
The grid decides which end of the pool gets used. At 10 by 10 it takes hope, plan, song, wish, year, chime, clock, dance, diary and goals, which a seven year old can work through in a sitting.
At 20 by 20 it takes the long end: resolutions, celebration, new beginning, midnight chime, first footing and Auld Lang Syne. Those run to twelve and thirteen letters and have to be tracked letter by letter rather than spotted as a shape.
Settings and printing
Words runs from ten to thirty-five, Directions from across and down up to all eight with reverses, and Word bank can be switched off so the list under the grid disappears and the hunt is blind.
Print in greyscale at 100 percent scaling with Fit to Page off. The letters are the whole page, so draft mode is a false economy: it prints them thin and grey and makes the columns hard to follow.
Questions
- Which words are in the New Year word search?
- Eighteen at the default settings: balloon, Big Ben, calendar, chimes, confetti, firework, future, goals, Hogmanay, January, midnight, new year, parade, party, promise, sparkle, whistle and wishes.
- Is it suitable for a classroom?
- Yes. The list is about the turn of the year, resolutions and the countdown to midnight, so there is nothing on the sheet a teacher would need to read through before handing it out.
- What age is this for?
- The 13 by 13 grid it opens on suits roughly nine upwards. Drop the grid to 10 by 10 for short words a seven year old can manage, or raise it to 20 by 20 for a room of adults.
- Can I print it without the word list?
- Yes. Set Word bank to Hidden and the list under the grid disappears, so the puzzle becomes a hunt for New Year words that nobody has named in advance.