Our youngest is six and deep in the phase where letters are magic. She fills pages with experiments: her name, words she’s sounded out, invented spellings that are almost right and somehow more charming for it. Reading is clicking into place in real time and it’s one of those things you can’t quite believe you’re watching.

We started doing word search puzzles together. She loves the hunt, scanning rows and circling letters the moment something clicks. Simple grids, short words, themes she picks herself (animals, food, family names). We got through the store-bought ones fast enough that it became clear we needed a way to make our own.

I made a Claude artifact for it. You type in a list of words, pick a grid size, and it generates a solvable puzzle on the spot. We print it, grab a pencil, and she’s off.

It took about an hour to get to something we’d actually use. The artifact handles word placement, fills the remaining cells with random letters, and makes sure the puzzle is solvable. Nothing fancy, but it works.

The next iteration I have in mind is PDF output with proper formatting and some illustrations she can color in while working through the puzzle. A printable activity rather than just a grid. I haven’t gotten there yet, but it’s on the list.

For now it’s doing exactly what it needs to do, which is keeping a six-year-old busy with letters on a Saturday afternoon.