for a boy, scratch is a good choice: http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/ for a girl: http://www.alice.org/ http://www.alice.org/ and storytelling

for a boy, scratch is a good choice: http://scratch.mit.edu/ http://scratch.mit.edu/ for a girl: http://www.alice.org/ http://www.alice.org/ and storytelling Alice. My little girl is interested in Scratch but Alice just hit the nail on the head when it comes to keeping a girl interested in the subject. I am also going to second Mindstorm it starts them down the right path, hardware and software. It is worth the money. Whatever you use, you want to get to games fast, if you want to keep them interested. It is hard to use a traditional language because you can't get the feedback of a small game quickly. Now I know there are some great programmers that can, but with the coding boat anchor that is a kid trust me, you be lucky to get to a simple game even on the iPhone in a week. The only traditional tech that comes close is Flash or a 3d game engine scripting language. Back when Macromedia was around, Director was great for this, I know Adobe still sells it, but I don't know if it is worth it anymore, not having touched it, in over a decade.