I just ran across another educational tool—Scratch—for teaching programming to kids. I love the idea behind these simplified programming environments because they make getting started very easy, show you results instantly, and remove all the frustration of setting up a programming environment. If you want to introduce your kids to programming, you might start with one of these. They’re all free and they all work on Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Scratch

Scratch is a programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art – and share your creations on the web.

http://vimeo.com/4077929

Alice

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm7bv4wduTI

Processing

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to create images, animations, and interactions.

I couldn’t find a good introductory video for this one. But the documentation and tutorial pages are top notch.