How do native Japanese people learn Kanji?

I know I'm rushing learning Japanese a lot, and even for "no reason" if you will... (I'm not planning on moving to, even traveling to Japan in a long while.) But I really want to learn the language. And so I've picked up Kanji even only half a year into my Japanese studies.

So I'm doing it by basically trying to learn the base meaning of a specific sign. Because it seems to me all words are a setup of signs which individual meanings become that word

Ex: 食 = Food
食べる = Eat

Or 今 = Now
日 = Day
今日 = Today

And I use a Google Chrome app which uses this knowledge as a base.

Anyway:

1.How to Japanese people learn it natively?
2. I see that a lot of signs seem to be comprised of many smaller signs if you get my meaning... can I derive what those signs mean in the same way I derive what word a collection of kanji is by their individual meaning?

Thanks!

1. Well when I was staying with my host family, my two younger host-sisters would have practice books that would show the kanji as pictures that would match the meaning of each one. This is actually a similar way to how I started to learn kanji as well. I don't know if this is how all native Japanese speakers learn kanji but it's a very quick and easy way to learn them.

2. umm I don't know if I understand correctly but I assume you're talking about the hiragana that appears over kanji in books sometimes. If that is what you're talking about that's simply the pronunciation of the kanji you're trying to read.

雨 = あめ = ame

it's just there to help people read the kanji if they don't know how to.

-2. I see that a lot of signs seem to be comprised of many smaller signs if you get my meaning... can I derive what those signs mean in the same way I derive what word a collection of kanji is by their individual meaning?

Sort of, but not how you are thinking. You can kind get an idea what the sign means (sometimes) but AFAIK you can't generally just look at and know confidently what it means without previous knowledge.

Like 侍. That's 人(person) next to 寺(temple) but it means samurai.

Ah, interesting...

I guess living around Kanji in your daily life, though, would help out immensely.

If you're interested in the way Kanji are comprised of several key primitives, you should look up "Remembering the Kanji" by James Heisig.
It's a learning method based on cumulative learning of the primitives and therefore expanding the number of kanji you know.
Pretty interesting approach, if you're interested in this sort of things.

As for how japanese children learn kanji... quite simple.
1/ School (the roughly 2k jouyou kanji are taught in school, a "few" new ones each year)
2/ Permanent immersion
3/ being young (which seriously help when learning)

To learn kanji..you can start with Japanese newspaper for kids, in these newspapers...you get reading of the kanji. the more you see the kanji...more you will be able to recognize it...for more read article..http://allaboutjap.blogspot.in/2012/12/read-japanese-newspaper-for-kid...

If you want to learn a bit by playing, you could also get the japanese "ni no kuni" for the PS3.

It has the hiragana over the kanji, so you know the reading.

Yeah, right now I read Manga in Japanese. Mangas like Bleach, Naruto and One Piece which are the three top rated as of right now always come with hiragana/katakana "above" (next to) the Kanji.

Of course, I still often don't know what they say xD

Yes, as 30yowizard said, Japanese students lean about 2,000 Kanjis for 9 years in the school.
The list of 1,006 Kanjis studying in the elementary school for 6 years.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%AD%A6%E5%B9%B4%E5%88%A5%E6%BC%A2%E5%A...
In my experience of teaching Japanese, kids really hate to learn Kanji.(lol
And recently parents like to make their children learn to speak English.

I'm a book-worm,
when I was child, I often read books without furigana(振り仮名; hiragana beside kanji),
so I often misread to pronounce.(x_x;

BTW, as Firedraco said, 侍 means SAMURAI.
But at first it means "to serve"(侍る; haberu), and then "lord-in-waiting" or SAMURAI who is a guard.
Maybe the person(人) in temple(寺) is to serve(侍) Buddha...?(^_^;

As you may know, modern Japanese children start by mastering all hiragana, and then all katakana, and then they finally start learning kanji.

When they start kanji, they start from simple letters like 一　人 木 etc. When learning these letters, you are taught that 一 is "one" simple line meaning "one," and 人 looks lika a human with two legs, and 木 looks like a tree. Children are typically shown pictures of humans and trees.

And then they use these basics to learn more complicated kanji. Take 休 for example.

To write 休, you write the katakana "no ノ" and then a "tate-bou (verticle line)" and then "tree 木." 木 of course is 一 and tatebou and ノ and another stroke. It's a human resting against a tree, they are told.

Of course, the whole class follows the teacher by making big strokes in the air while saying "yasumu" out loud. They they are given time to write about ten of the same kanji on their notebooks. Typically, these notebook assignments are done as homework.

The basics are important. Otherwise you can't say "katakana no no" as you write the first stroke of 休, nor you won't know the words like "tatebou" or "yokobou" etc.

It's easy to learn how to read kanji if you enjoy reading. But just as it is with English spellings, you won't learn to write them unless you practice writing them by yourself.

It's also very easy to forget how to write kanji, just as it is easy to forget spellings. Computers make it very easy for us to forget them as they will automatically correct all our mistakes ;)