Writing even a simple games program is quite challenging and not the sort of thing to cut your teeth on. Programming is wonderful training in logic for kids (and adults).
I started with a ZX80 and learned most of the rudiments of programming on a Sinclair Spectrum using Basic many years ago. Sounds silly, but all the basics of programming and good structure are there - declarations, conditionals, loops, arrays, system variables, machine code, subroutines, error checking, input modules, IF, ELSE, OR, NOT, THEN, AND, procedure calling, Boolean algebra and so on. And when the Speccy crashes you just switch it on and off again easy peasy. You can still find 'em, though I don't know about the Microdrives.
10 FOR I=1 TO 10
20 PRINT "KEVIN"
30 NEXT I
The first program most people write
but it teaches about counters and loops...
Micro$haft started with GWBasic, a very primitive effort, but by DOS 5.x had introduced QBasic, a far better implementation. You should be able to find Qbasic.exe and it's few supporting files easily enough (runs fine under 98 and probably XP too) but if you can't, contact me & I can send them to you. I know Basic sounds silly these days, but I'd venture that it is better for learning the cornerstones of programming logic than VBS or Pascal or
{
__{
_____{lisp}
__}
}
Have a look at some of the example programs that come with QBasic like Gorilla or Passages and see that even a simple game needs a good understanding of the logical constructs implicit in any non-trivial program.
Actually, even writing DOS style batchfiles can be an education, but I don't think many people know how to do this anymore even though it's still useful in XP!
What do they use at his school? Maybe they plunge straight into C++ or C# !
Edited to add PS:
Search Google with:
(teach OR teaching) children programming
and there are lots of hits
http://www.kidsfreeware.com/school/study_prog.html has lots of stuff that looks useful.