Printable word searches for kids

The difficulty of a word search has almost nothing to do with the words in it and almost everything to do with three settings. Get those right for the age and a puzzle is absorbing; get them wrong and it is either over in a minute or abandoned in tears.

The three settings that decide difficulty

Grid size

How many letters across. The single biggest factor. A 10×10 is a different activity from a 15×15

Backwards words

Off makes a puzzle dramatically easier. For younger children, turn it off

Words per puzzle

Fewer words in a larger grid is harder, not easier, because the letters between them are all distractors

Roughly by age

Treat these as starting points rather than rules; children vary enormously, and the preview means you can try one and change your mind in seconds.

• Ages 5–7. A grid around 8×8 to 10×10, six to eight short words, backwards off, large letters. Words running only left to right and top to bottom is plenty at this stage.
• Ages 8–10. Around 12×12, ten to twelve words, backwards still off or just introduced. Diagonals start being fun rather than frustrating.
• Ages 11 and up. 15×15 upwards, fifteen or more words, backwards on. This is where a puzzle can occupy a long car journey.

The Kids preset sets a smaller grid, no backwards words and big friendly letters in one click, which is a reasonable place to start for anyone under about eight.

Your own words, in one line each

A topic is a title, a colon, then the words separated by commas. One line per puzzle:

The title prints above the grid, so it is worth making it something the child will recognise. Words with spaces are fine. They print with the space and hide in the grid without it.

There is no limit on how many word lists you paste or how long they are, on any plan.

Answers, so someone else can mark it

Every book includes an answer section showing where each word sits. That matters more than it sounds: it is what lets a puzzle be handed to a teaching assistant, a grandparent, or a substitute teacher without the person marking it having to solve it first.

How answers are marked is adjustable: a ring around the word, a line through it, or a highlight. So is where the hint pointing to each answer appears.

For a classroom

A few things worth knowing if you are printing for a group:

• Print at 100%, not “fit to page”. Scaling shrinks the margins and shifts the grid off-centre.
• Black and white prints fine. If your colour is low or you are on a mono photocopier, set the title colour to black and turn shaded bands off.
• Keep the seed if you might reprint. The same seed reproduces exactly the same sheet next term; a different one gives the same words in a completely different arrangement, which is useful when half the class has seen it already.
• Save the style once you have found settings that work for your year group, and the next one starts from there.

What it costs

Nothing, for this. Building and previewing needs no account at all. An account is needed to download, and the free plan allows ten downloads a month with up to ten puzzles in each, which is a term’s worth of weekly worksheets.

Everything you print is yours. There is no per-copy fee, nothing to credit, and no restriction on handing it out. The paid plan exists for people making full-length books, not for classrooms.