I've been teaching my 11 year old nephiew. I started out with perl, but it wasn't long until he wanted to make something "cool". I desided to use blender. It's a 3-d modeling and rendering program that also has a game engine. I just made some 3-d models for him to use in his games. The language used for many things in blender is . . . on second thought I won't speak that unholy word ;) He is now also interested in learning how to create 3-d models. All in all it has worked out well.