Printable Easy Kids Crossword Puzzles (Free PDF)

These printable easy kids crossword puzzles are made for ages 6 to 8. You can download the free PDF below: six small crosswords, two to a page, followed by a page with the six solutions. Everything on the page, from the grids to the answers, was made by the LogikLand kids crossword generator.

Download the printable PDF (6 crosswords and solutions)

What is in the PDF

The pages are US Letter size, 8.5 by 11 inches. Each puzzle has its grid on top and its clues below, in two columns: Across and Down. Every clue is a short sentence, such as "A cute word for a rabbit" for BUNNY.

Four of the puzzles

Here are the first four, so you can see the size of the squares and the length of the clues before you print.

A walk through puzzle 1

Puzzle 1 is a good one to do with a child because it is a chain: each answer gives a letter to the next one.

1. 1 across: "A horse-like animal with black and white stripes". Five squares: ZEBRA. Its third letter, B, is the first square of 2 down.
2. 2 down: "A cute word for a rabbit". It starts with B and has five letters: BUNNY. Its last letter, Y, is the last square of 4 across.
3. 4 across: "A cute word for a cat". Five letters ending in Y: KITTY. Its second letter, I, is the second letter of 3 down.
4. 3 down: "A huge animal that loves to sit in water", with an I in the second place: HIPPO. Its last letter, O, is the second letter of 5 across.
5. 5 across: "An Australian animal that eats leaves", five letters with O in the second place: KOALA.

Each step used a clue and one letter that was already in the grid, never a guess. That is what the ages 6-8 level is built for.

What easy means here

Easy is the ages 6-8 level of the LogikLand Kids Crossword generator. The rules of that level are fixed: answers have 3 to 5 letters, a grid has 5 or 6 words, and a grid is never larger than 8 squares on a side. Words come only from the list written for ages 6 to 8. That is why the six puzzles above use plain words such as BROOM, ROBOT and DAISY.

Two things make a puzzle like this friendly. First, each word crosses at least one other word, so a child always has a letter to lean on. Second, the clues have a plain sentence shape and never contain their own answer.

Which theme to choose

The six puzzles use six different themes. When you make your own, the theme decides how many different short words you can use before they repeat. This table counts the words of 3 to 5 letters in the English ages 6-8 list, by theme.

A grid uses five or six words, so a theme with 20 words gives only three or four different grids before words come back. Animals, food and toys are the safest themes for a first printable pack.

Printing and using the pages

• Print at 100 % of the page size. On A4 paper, choose "fit to page" in the print dialog.
• Print the solutions page separately so the child does not see it by accident.
• Give a pencil and a rubber, so that a wrong letter can be changed without fuss.

Ideas for a lesson or a quiet hour

• Solve puzzle 1 together as a chain, as above, then let the child do puzzle 2 alone.
• After a puzzle, ask the child to write a new clue of their own for one of the answers. A clue that does not contain the answer is harder than it sounds.
• Use a themed puzzle as a warm-up before a lesson on the same theme: animals before a science lesson, food before a cooking activity.
• Pass two puzzles between two children and let them check each other with the solutions page.

The rules are explained in kids crossword rules. If you want to teach a method, how to solve a kids crossword gives one.

Making more puzzles

The sample is fixed. To make as many pages as you like, with the theme you choose, the age levels 6-8 and 8-12 and your own page size, create a free account to make a full book in the Kids Crossword assistant. Our suggestion, not a rule: choose "all themes mixed" for a long book, because a single theme has only a limited number of short words. For a first look at the puzzle itself, see crossword puzzles for kids.

Questions