Getting kids started

I havent had any experience teaching kids that young. But I have done a lot of programming tutoring.  As a full time programmer here is my advice.

dont use debian. scrap the install, and use CentOS or Ubuntu instead. Debian is a great distro, but its massively painful if you arent experienced with linux. For your desktop environment, I personally prefer gnome over KDE. KDE is too busy for my tastes, but its really just a matter of preference. Install both though even if you wont use them. you'll find some programs require them to be installed.

I would also avoid python. Its very easy sure, until you have an error. And you will have an error. but you wont see it. Because its in whitespace. Somewhere in code you will have spaces instead of a tab, and thats seriously the most annoying error to debug in the world.

As a fist language, I really want to suggest Perl, but its honestly too easy and that makes it _really_ easy to pick up bad habits. Smalltalk is a pretty good option as well. Some definite DONTS: C, pascal/delphi, C++,D, Java, C#, javascript. Those guys are either exceedingly difficult, have some really sneaky gotchas, or both.

At the end of the day though, the most important thing about programming is the thought process. It really doesnt matter what language you speak if you dont know what you want to say. or in other words, you have to know what you want to say, before you can think about how to say it. (i hope that makes sense)

Thats really the biggest issue for people in my experience. They dont seem to break the steps down enough for it to make sense as code. They want to simply walk instead of move right foot forward. shift weight to right foot. balance. move left foot forward. shift weight to left foot. balance. repeat. So maybe start with lesson(s) focusing on how to break things down into algorithms. whether its walking or baking a pretty cake they need to be able to identify all the steps from start to finish.

As far as using raspis, consider that you will probably also need to purchase: power supply, keyboard, mouse, and monitor for each raspi. So thats perhaps an additional 50 bucks or so. You can easily get a good used laptop for that price. I dont know how many you intend to buy, but raspis also seem to be in limited supply. food for thought.

ETA: When it comes to first programming projects, im a sucker for physical stuff. It doesnt have to be robots or anything that fancy. Just something you can write in code then see work in the real world. You could start with a perl script that turns on an LED. Then add a photoresistor and the appropriate code to make it so the light only comes on when its dark. ... next thing you know, youve made this badboy http://youtu.be/NO47IX9lz-s

I havent had any experience teaching kids that young. But I have done a lot of programming tutoring.  As a full time programmer here is my advice.

dont use debian. scrap the install, and use CentOS or Ubuntu instead. Debian is a great distro, but its massively painful if you arent experienced with linux. For your desktop environment, I personally prefer gnome over KDE. KDE is too busy for my tastes, but its really just a matter of preference. Install both though even if you wont use them. you'll find some programs require them to be installed.

I would also avoid python. Its very easy sure, until you have an error. And you will have an error. but you wont see it. Because its in whitespace. Somewhere in code you will have spaces instead of a tab, and thats seriously the most annoying error to debug in the world.

As a fist language, I really want to suggest Perl, but its honestly too easy and that makes it _really_ easy to pick up bad habits. Smalltalk is a pretty good option as well. Some definite DONTS: C, pascal/delphi, C++,D, Java, C#, javascript. Those guys are either exceedingly difficult, have some really sneaky gotchas, or both.

At the end of the day though, the most important thing about programming is the thought process. It really doesnt matter what language you speak if you dont know what you want to say. or in other words, you have to know what you want to say, before you can think about how to say it. (i hope that makes sense)

Thats really the biggest issue for people in my experience. They dont seem to break the steps down enough for it to make sense as code. They want to simply walk instead of move right foot forward. shift weight to right foot. balance. move left foot forward. shift weight to left foot. balance. repeat. So maybe start with lesson(s) focusing on how to break things down into algorithms. whether its walking or baking a pretty cake they need to be able to identify all the steps from start to finish.

As far as using raspis, consider that you will probably also need to purchase: power supply, keyboard, mouse, and monitor for each raspi. So thats perhaps an additional 50 bucks or so. You can easily get a good used laptop for that price. I dont know how many you intend to buy, but raspis also seem to be in limited supply. food for thought.

ETA: When it comes to first programming projects, im a sucker for physical stuff. It doesnt have to be robots or anything that fancy. Just something you can write in code then see work in the real world. You could start with a perl script that turns on an LED. Then add a photoresistor and the appropriate code to make it so the light only comes on when its dark. ... next thing you know, youve made this badboy http://youtu.be/NO47IX9lz-s