Although learning Chinese characters is important and helpful for your Chinese study, you need to master the tool called Pinpin. Why do you need to learn Pinyin? Why Pinyin is important?

\Here’s a good video by Emma explaining why Pinyin is important and helpful for Chinese learners.

Mind you, you should never only rely on Pinyin to learn Chinese.
For a kid, it is always good to learn some (200 to 300) characters first before you learn Pinyin as in Prof. Liping Ma’s textbook ( www.heritagechinese.com )

My daughter (7-year-old) started to learn Chinese at weekend Chinese school and I chose a class using their textbook. The school is at http://www.srvchineseschool.org/

You can easily find Pinyin with a way in the following video at Google Translate:

You can also get the Pinyin with tone marks at 发音字典 by ChineseBay.com
You may also find some great materials at our Chinese Learning bookstore http://astore.amazon.com/ikaibo-20/search?node=213&keywords=Pinyin