A system of materials facilitates teaching Chinese characters to a child in progressive stages, whether or not the teacher is fluent in Chinese. Each stage associates a multi-colored object with a correspondingly multi-colored Chinese character that represents the object. For a child from birth to two years, a first stage material animates the object and morphs the object into the corresponding Chinese character. For a child two to four years, a second stage material to be read to the child by the teacher displays the object adjacent to the character, and material provides interactive means for the child to associate the object with the character. For a child four to seven years, a third stage story book displays text containing a sentence made of multiple characters and a scene corresponding to the meaning of the sentence, and for a child seven to nine years, a fourth stage group book presents multiple Chinese characters that share a common group element, whether meaning or sound. The materials may include explanatory Chinese and non-Chinese text with Pin Yin and teaching tips for kinesthetic learning. The materials may each comprise separately executable programs in a common software module, for example, in DVD format.