We’ve been experimenting with porting our TKP (Teaching Kids Programming) recipe library over to Java (from SmallBasic).  We recorded a short video showing a comparison between using the SmallBasic language and editor as it compares to using Java with Eclipse as a student would try out our first recipe (SQUARE).

We are quite interested in your feedback.  What do you think?  Do you teach your own kids to program?  Which language(s) and tool(s) have you used?  What have been your experiences — both good and bad?

TKP courseware targets kids ages 10+.  Our courseware is intended to be fun and useful for both boys and girls.  Since I happen to have a 13-year old daughter, we have a convenient (at home) QA tester of our lessons.  We work with kids who have basic keyboarding (typing) skills, and those that are new to programming.

We are looking to expand our library and best (teaching) practices information at our TKP site to include other languages and we welcome your suggestions.