Not a parent, but sharing my experiences as a kid.
GameMaker (https://www.yoyogames.com/get) was my gateway drug to programming. It's an environment for making games that covers everything from programming the game logic, to designing game "rooms", the sprites and sounds in one package.
I was introduced to the software by my father at roughly the age of 9 to 11 and we did the introductory tutorial together. After that, I continued messing around mostly on my own.
What in hindsight turned out to be quite brilliant, was that GameMaker supports both drag-and-drop programming and scripting. I was able to start off by using drag-and-drop, but quickly realized that scripting was the way to go for more complex logic. The combined environment made it a rather smooth transition, as I only had to add the scripting part to an otherwise familiar graphical environment.
It seems like GameMaker is still around, so that can definitely be something to check out. Making games is fun and I remember having great times in the community, too.
GameMaker (https://www.yoyogames.com/get) was my gateway drug to programming. It's an environment for making games that covers everything from programming the game logic, to designing game "rooms", the sprites and sounds in one package.
I was introduced to the software by my father at roughly the age of 9 to 11 and we did the introductory tutorial together. After that, I continued messing around mostly on my own.
What in hindsight turned out to be quite brilliant, was that GameMaker supports both drag-and-drop programming and scripting. I was able to start off by using drag-and-drop, but quickly realized that scripting was the way to go for more complex logic. The combined environment made it a rather smooth transition, as I only had to add the scripting part to an otherwise familiar graphical environment.
It seems like GameMaker is still around, so that can definitely be something to check out. Making games is fun and I remember having great times in the community, too.