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My 4 yr old daughter loves Robot Turtles. That anyone can say that is testament to its awesomeness. The board game format is part of the appeal and allows a kind of interaction (with you) that'd be missing on iPad. But check out code.org for a software alternative with comparable goals.

I started playing with programming when I was about 7, I know of people who started with 5.

We need a way to introduce automation into minecraft.

I know there are mods that incorporate turtle graphics-controlled agents for automation. Of course, there is also redstone automation, which is useful, but also much more complicated.

For slightly older kids, there's the Minecraft Pi edition.