I'm teaching programming to an 8th grader now as part of an inner-city mentoring program sponsored by my employer. He seems to be picking it up pretty well, in

I'm teaching programming to an 8th grader now as part of an inner-city mentoring program sponsored by my employer. He seems to be picking it up pretty well, in my view the key is not to overcomplicate things. Pick a language with a REPL, teach them the substitution model, and show them how to teach a computer to do things. I've taken a fair amount of inspiration from the SICP lectures by Sussman and Abelson. If you are planning on teaching people to program, they are worth a watch.