New to VB making hangman game

Hi, for starters i am very new to VB and i am trying to self teach myself(not going to well). i have started a hang man program but i am lost on how to refrence lbls that i have made into a list of lables. the code listed below is a function that adds lables to a form based on a word size. If anyone can help me reference these labels so i can check them and then make them visible it would be very much appriciated. thanks in advance

Dim ret As New List(Of Label)
Dim curtop As Integer = 103
Dim curleft As Integer = 122

For Each C As Char In word
Dim lbl As New Label
lbl.Visible = False
lbl.Text = C
lbl.Top = curtop
lbl.Left = curleft

curleft += 40



ret.Add(lbl)
Next
Return ret.ToArray

End Function

You reference the items collection to access an item in the list
i.e

Code:

---

ret.items(index)

---

You will have to add the labels to the form.controls collection before they will show on the form

add them as in putting

ME.Controls.AddRange(functionname(word))

that's how i call the function

here is the hangman game I developed for grades 6-9 for summer computer camp.
http://employee.heartland.edu/tmulli...cNet/index.pdf
the pdf doesn't allow right clicking to get images so change the index.pdf to index.htm. the htm version is not formatted so I don't use it in class. Hope it helps.
T