I’m not a parent, but I have some good memories of my father teaching me how to program the game «Snake» in basic as a kid (10 years old maybe). We started talk

I’m not a parent, but I have some good memories of my father teaching me how to program the game «Snake» in basic as a kid (10 years old maybe). We started talking about what we want to build, and he showed me how to draw things to the screen. We then iterated and improved the game more and more (within a couple of hours). I had no prior experience with coding and very much enjoyed seeing how things progressed and how you can make the computer react to keyboard presses. While I was not able to write the game myself (or properly understand how to write simple applications) it helped me to get an idea how applications are made and a basic way of thinking. Also, for me this was really motivating and inspiring. In retrospect, I like the project-based approach—building something from start to finish in a couple of hours. If something sticks there is still enough time to go into detail and learn the basics, but learning the basics is so much easier if the motivation is high, which for me it was seeing that one can build a game oneself in a couple of hours.