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Unpopular opinion, but I am of the mind that my kid (now 8 yo) needs to get a full experience of learning with writing/drawing/reading on paper before I "shortcut" him to doing it on a computer. Same goes for self-entertainment.

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I think this is important. A lot of programming classes or teaching focuses just on the tools, but not really on the goals of what you want to use those tools to do.

My daughter is really into Minecraft and has learned that there are mods out there. So, now there is something she actually wants to be able to DO. That's a big part of what drives programming motivation for kids.

Making a mod is a really good driver for learning development. That's how I got started. It's good that the goal is so unreachable at the start. There's an awful lot to learn and you need to boostrap yourself, somehow, into doing something remotely productive.

I never finished my mod, but I spent 2 years learning C++, Photoshop, 3DS Max, Worldcraft, and all manner of other tools on the way. It was great exposure and it never felt tedious because my goal wasn't learning how to program, it was learning how to make a homing missile, or a texture for my fort. :)

I wasn't really interested, at the time, in learning how to write a simple bank that could process transactions, or a task list.

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