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Hello?
I'm really surprised that out of all of the letters here, nobody has mentioned Squeak or Logo, both of which are aimed at children as a First Programming Language.
Both have shiny, lickable graphics and teach programming as a form of play while exposing students to the concepts logic, reason, causality, etc. Both are eminently available on both the Mac and PC platform, and Squeak(a version of Smalltalk, the original Object-Oriented programming language) has the plus of actually being used in real-world practical applications.
For God's sake, DON'T teach them Perl. Write-only is not a principle that children should be exposed in their first encounter with programming.
The absolute worst that could happen to them if they learn Squeak is that they get an early start on being a snooty Computer Science OO purist and insist there's nowhere else they could POSSIBLY ever go to college except for Berkeley or Stanford....short of the tuition bills, this is pretty much everything a parent could hope for, no?
