Nine colors, nine digits, and a key that never repeats
A color code sheet is the simplest kind of puzzle there is: look it up, write it down. What it practices is not arithmetic but staying on task — twenty-five lookups in a row without losing your place, which is harder for a five-year-old than any one of them is.
Look it up, write it down, twenty-five times.
A color code worksheet generator, printable as a PDF. Pick four, five or six squares to a row and generate. The key at the top holds the same nine colors every time — red, orange, yellow, brown, sky, blue, purple, pink and charcoal — but which digit each one carries is dealt afresh for every sheet, so yesterday's sheet cannot be copied onto today's. The squares are printed as pencil hatching rather than flat blocks, so the page looks like something colored in rather than something printed. Print this one in color: the key is the sheet.
1 token a sheet, fewer in batches.
US Letter PDF — prints on any home printer.
Find
The first square in the row, and its color in the key.
Read
The digit printed on that color.
Write
It goes in the box, in order, left to right.
Squares in a row
The key is always the same nine colors; which digit each one gets is drawn afresh for every sheet.
Your worksheet lands here — download, print, or email it.