Why these 8
Colours are the second or third thing a class learns to name, and they are unusually good writing practice: every one of these eight is a word a child already has in their own language, so nothing has to be explained before the hand can start. Two of them carry more than their colour. 红 is built on the silk radical 纟, because red was a dye before it was anything else, and it is still the colour of luck — the envelope, the door paper, the wedding. 青 is the odd one: one word covering the blue of the sky and the green of new grass, from a time when Chinese did not split the two. A learner who asks why 青 is translated two different ways has noticed something real.
For the teacher
What a learner should be able to do afterwards
- Write eight colour words and match each to the colour itself
- Use 色 to ask and answer 什么颜色 — what colour
- Notice that 红 and 绿 share the 纟 radical, and that 青 covers both blue and green
Running it
- Print this one in colour if you can, or hand out crayons: children colouring the box beside each character remember the pairing far better than they remember the word alone. The sheet is designed to still work in black and white.
- 红 and 绿 both start with 纟. Writing them one after the other makes the shared component obvious without it having to be taught.
- Expect a question about 青. It is not a mistake in the dictionary — the word genuinely covers blue and green, and 青 in a modern word can be either. "The old word for both" is a true and sufficient answer for a class.
- 四 colours in one sitting is plenty for under-eights: 白, 色, 红, 青 are all eight strokes or fewer, and 绿黄黑蓝 make a natural second sheet.
These notes were written from general teaching practice; not yet reviewed by a classroom teacher. If you teach and something here is wrong, we would rather hear it than not.
All 8 characters
| 白 | bái | white | 5 strokes |
| 色 | sè | color; look | 6 strokes |
| 红 | hóng | red | 6 strokes |
| 青 | qīng | blue-green | 8 strokes |
| 绿 | lǜ | green; (slang) (derived from 绿帽子) to cheat on (one's spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend) | 11 strokes |
| 黄 | huáng | yellow; pornographic | 11 strokes |
| 黑 | hēi | black | 12 strokes |
| 蓝 | lán | blue; indigo plant | 13 strokes |
Questions people ask
Because it means both. Chinese did not divide the blue–green range the way English does at the point 青 entered the language, and the word kept the whole span. Modern compounds fall on either side of the English line, which is why a dictionary gives you two glosses and neither is wrong.
Eventually, and they are not on this sheet yet — they are outside the character database this site is built from, which covers the thousand most common characters and HSK levels 1 to 3. You can still type them into the generator and print a sheet with them on it.