Beginning Lessons in Chinese Characters.




Download the above explanation to print for classroom use.




Download a JPG image to reproduce for your own use here.

Putting an ancient Chinese character into an appropriate context may help young students see what the character depicts. The ancient form of the Chinese character 月 has been superimposed on a landscape painting. Ask students, "What is this white thing?" The digital image of the painting by Egon Schiele (1890—1918). The public domain status of the image can be seen at the following URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schiele_-_Wiese_mit_Dorf_im_Hintergrund_-_1907.jpg

2. 


Download the above explanation to print for classroom use.



For the public domain status of this photograph, see: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MountGriggs.jpg

Download a high-resolution of this photo to reproduce for classroom use. See whether students can get
the idea of how to draw mountains by partially overlaying triangular shapes.

3.

 Download a copy of the above explanation to print out for use in your classroom.




Download above image for classroom use.  See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Big_Horn_Sheep,_Montana,_USA.jpg for  cc-by-2.0 conditions for use.
Bighorn 羊 have horns that can be almost complete circles.


See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Female_bighorn_sheep.jpg for public domain status of this image.
Download a copy of this image for use in the classroom.

4.

Here is an ancient Chinese character that is a simple drawing of something early humans used to hunt with:



The thin vertical line has been added to the original. It is a piece of string that is too thin to see from a distance.
To help you see what this is a silouette of, here is the hunting tool with something else that people need to have if they are going to hunt:



Download the above discussion so you can print it for use in your own classroom. (here)


Here is a drawing of a real one from what is now Iran:


"A man carrying the bow of the Persian king." Note how the bow make a U-turn at the top, just like the ancient Chinese bow.

For the creative commons license for this image, see: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Illustrerad_Verldshistoria_band_I_Ill_066.jpg?uselang=en-gb

Download a copy of this image to use in the classroom here.

5.


The "filled-out" form is just something I have done to make the idea clearer to beginners. No ancient Chinese character looked like that as far as I know.
Download a copy of the above explanation to print for your own use here.
Here is a real one:


You can see the Creative Commons license for this photo here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/ba/A_Longhorn_cow_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1520802.jpg

You can download various sizes of this image here.



You can download various sizes of this image here.
Matching exercise one:

Answers to quiz 1.


Matching exercise 2:


Answers to quiz 2.

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Beginning Lessons in K-12 Chinese by Patrick Edwin Moran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.