When my children were young I wrote them some games using Love2d in which they and their pets were the characters. It was just intended to be a bit of fun, and

When my children were young I wrote them some games using Love2d in which they and their pets were the characters. It was just intended to be a bit of fun, and it was, but they were actively involved in the game design and the artwork. I also worked through some of the maths and physics with them and they saw how it all came together in the code. I'm not sure they did any coding per se other than tweaking parameters for gerbil speed etc but I think they got an appreciation of where programming fits in and how it's part of an interconnected whole. Subsequently they have used Scratch at junior school and they all took to it without any help from me. None of them have shown a particularly strong interest in pursuing computing either academically or as a profession and I haven't seen any need to push it. If your children do show an interest though, I do recommend something like Scratch or Love2d (I'm sure there are equivalents for other dynamic languages). It's easy to produce a game that's surprisingly good and the feedback loop is essentially instantaneous. I particularly liked how, with a game, it naturally brings together art, maths, science, computers and programming without feeling forced.