Why these 10
Chinese numbers are the cheapest win in the language. One, two and three are literally one, two and three lines. Ten is a cross. Once you have these ten characters you can write every number under a hundred, because Chinese builds them by saying them: 二十三 is "two ten three", twenty-three. There is no new vocabulary to learn between ten and ninety-nine.
For the teacher
What a learner should be able to do afterwards
- Write 一 to 十 from memory with the strokes in the standard order
- Say each number aloud while writing it, so the sound and the shape are learned together
- Build any number under a hundred by combining them — 二十三 is "two ten three"
Running it
- Fifteen minutes is one unhurried pass of the sheet. Under-sevens usually do better with two sittings of eight minutes than one of fifteen.
- Teach 七 and 十 side by side. Both are two strokes, and a child who has just learned 十 will often draw 七 as a mirrored version of it. Putting them in the same row once settles it.
- 四 is the first character on the sheet that is not a count of lines. It is five strokes, and the enclosing 囗 is drawn before what sits inside it — the general rule for any character with a box around it.
- If you want a shorter sheet, print rows for 一 to 五 only. The stroke count doubles after that and a beginner's attention usually does not stretch to ten characters in one sitting.
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 10 characters
Questions people ask
By combining what is on this sheet. 十一 is eleven (ten one), 二十 is twenty (two ten), 九十九 is ninety-nine. Add 百 hundred, 千 thousand and 万 ten thousand and you can write any number you are likely to need.
Financial documents use elaborate forms — 壹 貳 參 instead of 一 二 三 — because the simple ones can be altered with a couple of extra strokes. It is anti-fraud design, about a thousand years old.