Hard Dinosaur Word Search | Free Printable
About This Worksheet
This is a hard puzzle and it is meant to be. The grid is large and the word bank is real palaeontology vocabulary -- multi-syllable words a nine- or ten-year-old will have to read carefully before they can hunt for them.
Older children are consistently handed word searches built for five-year-olds and lose interest within a minute. The difficulty here is the feature. Words run in every direction, including backwards, and finding them takes real concentration.
The word bank has 10 words in a 19x19 grid: Herbivore, Jurassic, Triassic, Cretaceous, Excavation, Iguanodon, Paleontology, Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Prehistoric.
Skills Practiced
How to Use This Worksheet
- Read the word bank properly first. Several of these words will be unfamiliar. Read them together and sort out what they mean before any searching starts.
- Break long words into chunks. PREHISTORIC is easier to hunt as PRE-HIS-TORIC. Scanning for the first chunk is far more practical than the whole word.
- Expect backwards placements. Tell them up front that words can run right-to-left and bottom-to-top. Without that warning, a hard grid just feels broken.
- Let it take more than one sitting. This is not a ten-minute sheet. Leaving it on the table and returning to it is the normal way to finish a puzzle this size.
Not sure this is the right level? Our guide to free printable word search puzzles for kids walks through every age in turn — see what to expect from a word search for 9 year olds or a word search for 10 year olds, and which puzzle to print next.