Action Verbs Word Search

A word search dedicated to action verbs, perfect for practising everyday movements and actions. Hidden in the grid are eight words to find: eating, running, reading, writing, sleeping, jumping, singing and swimming. Verbs that can be acted out are some of the easiest words to remember, since children can connect the word directly to a movement. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for language learning and active classrooms.

EATING
RUNNING
READING
WRITING
SLEEPING
JUMPING
SINGING
SWIMMING

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Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Action Verbs, one by one

Each word in this grid is an action that children can act out, so the puzzle is easy to turn into a game. Below is a short note on each verb, useful for talking about what the words mean once the grid is solved.

Eating — One of the first actions children learn to name, easily linked to mealtime routines.

Running — A fast, energetic action that's easy to act out and always popular with children.

Reading — An action that opens the door to every story and every other subject.

Writing — Goes hand in hand with reading and is one of the first skills built at school.

Sleeping — A calm, restful action, easy to mime by closing the eyes and resting the head on folded hands.

Jumping — A joyful, physical action that children love acting out with real jumps.

Singing — Connects words to music and rhythm, making vocabulary stick even faster.

Swimming — A summer favourite action, often linked to pools, lakes and the seaside.

Spelling the -ing forms: three small rules

Every word in this grid ends in -ing, the form we use to say that something is happening now: “I am eating”, “she is running”. The spelling follows three simple rules, and the eight words show all of them. Most verbs just add -ing: eat becomes eating, and read, sleep, jump and sing behave in the same way. A verb that ends in a silent -e drops it, so write becomes writing. And a short verb that ends in a single consonant after a single vowel doubles that consonant, so run becomes running and swim becomes swimming.

The past tense is trickier. Seven of these eight verbs are irregular: ate, ran, read (spelled the same but pronounced like “red”), wrote, slept, sang and swam. Only jump follows the regular pattern and becomes jumped. Learners often memorise irregular verbs in groups, and a word search is a gentle first meeting with them.

Mime, guess and write

Action verbs are the easiest words to turn into movement, so this puzzle can start a lively lesson:

Mime and guess. A child acts out one of the eight verbs without speaking, and the others call out the word. Whoever guesses correctly finds it in the grid before taking the next turn.
What are you doing? One child mimes and asks the group, “What am I doing?” The answer has to be a full sentence: “You are swimming.” It practises exactly the -ing form of the grid.
Sort the rules. Draw three columns on the board, headed add -ing, drop the e and double the letter, and let the children place the eight words in the correct column.
A day in pictures. Ask each child to draw four of the actions in the order they happen in their own day, then write a sentence under each picture, using words such as first, then and after.

How this grid is built

On 12×12 squares, this grid holds eight verbs: four horizontal, four vertical and none diagonal, so every word can be found by following a row or a column. SLEEPING and SWIMMING, with eight letters, are the longest; EATING, with six letters, is the shortest, and the other five have seven. The only crossings involve SLEEPING, which is cut by EATING in an I and by SINGING in an N, one row below the other. The bottom row and the tenth column contain no words.

More verbs to try

To keep practising, open the generator and type in other everyday verbs in their -ing form: dancing, riding, drawing, walking, playing. Notice that dancing and riding lose their final -e while drawing, walking and playing simply add -ing, so the new grid doubles as a spelling exercise. Use the Medium level for rows and columns, or Hard to add diagonals.

Also in Italian

In Italian the same actions are given by the infinitive: mangiare (eat), correre (run), leggere (read), scrivere (write), dormire (sleep), saltare (jump), cantare (sing) and nuotare (swim). Italian builds “I am eating” with stare and the gerund, sto mangiando. The Italian version of the puzzle, Crucipuzzle dei Verbi Italiani, uses the infinitives and has five horizontal and three vertical words.