Hi Meilan!
Agree with Lena that reading comes before writing, just as listening comes before speaking. If a really smart baby takes 9 - 12 months to speak his first word, after having listened to sounds around him passively for so long, then I think we need to give ourselves some patience in teaching reading and writing.
And before reading can be achieved, word recognition must happen.
If you said JK has no problems with 1,2 and 3 in Chinese characters, then take it from there.
Always mix more familiars with the new word that he needs to learn that day. In that way, it boosts confidence in a game of word recognition.
Write many 1,2,3,4 in characters all over a piece of paper and ask him if he point out to you where 1,2,3's are first. And then when you sense he's got an interest in this look and find game, then move on and ask him to point at the character 4. Don't even tell him that it's 4 as in "si4". Ask him to look for the same character elsewhere on the page. Give him some colour pencils/markers to mark out. And let him know he can take as long as he likes. If he prefers not to have you buzz around him when he does it, then you can do something else while he does his little word search.
My children love it whenever I ask them to look for something and I'll sing, "A hunting we will go..." to the tune of "A Farmer in the dell".
Always start an activity by saying, "Let's play a little game". It gets more attention from a child than anything...
e.g. "Let's play a game. Let's see who can find the most number of 1's."
Or you can write 4 out on a little word card and ask him to go and look around the house for some pieces of furuniture that have the same shape. e.g. a square window or table, or squarish book or square plate? Whatever... get him to focus on the somewhat shape of the character.
Or you can make 4 word cards, with numbers 1 - 4 written on each card separately. And ask him to arrange numbers for you like, 1-2-3-4, or 4-3-2-1, or 1-3-2-4 or whatever you have in mind.
Or you can make memory cards, just 4 pairs of cards and get him to play it with you.
All these activities will need him to actively recognise the words, but you are actually not forcing him to read off the card. Do them with him only when he feels game to them. Then it will be fun...
So try out my off-hand lesson plan!
Let me know if any of these activities works... maybe I'll try them out with B too.
