12 year olds are quite smart. Send them this page and see if anything attracts their interest. It's a bit harder these days than it was 10-20 years ago where

12 year olds are quite smart. Send them this page and see if anything attracts their interest. It's a bit harder these days than it was 10-20 years ago where there were many less distractions. I'd recommend showing them "cool" things that use programming. Wearables, small automated things, computer controlled squirtguns, 3d printers, visit a local maker space, etc. Sure there's many people that self started decades ago and taught themselves programming from scratch with minimal resources. But lets face it, those people are the exception not the rule.