One of the fun things about “old school” computers is that it was fairly easy to get kids into programming them. The old Basic interpreters were pretty forgiving, and you could do some clever things easily with very little theory or setup. These days, you are more likely to sneak kids into programming via Scratch — a system for setting up programs via blocks in a GUI. Again, you can get simple results simply. With Scratch or Basic, complex things have a way of turning out complex, but that’s to be expected. If you want to try a Scratch-inspired take on microcontroller programming, check out MicroBlocks. It will work with several common boards, including the micro:bit and the Raspberry Pi Pico. You can use it in a browser or download versions for Linux, Windows, Mac, or even Chromebooks.

You can see a video below about the micro:bit version from a year ago. The tool is advancing, so you’ll find many new features compared to the video, but it will still give you an idea of what’s happening.

https://microblocks.fun/

Afraid of Programming in Code? Try Scratch For Arduino
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/afraid-programming-code-try-scratch-arduino/

With Experimental Extensions, you can create Scratch projects that connect with external hardware (such as electronic devices and robotics) and online resources (including web data and web services).

S4A is a Scratch modification that allows for simple programming of the Arduino open source hardware platform. It provides new blocks for managing sensors and actuators connected to Arduino.

he main aim of the project is attracting people to the programming world. The goal is also to provide a high level interface to Arduino programmers with functionalities such as interacting with a set of boards through user events.

Arduino objects offer blocks for the basic microcontroller functionalities, analog and digital writes and reads, and also for higher level ones. You can find blocks to manage standard and continuous rotation servomotors

In S4A, an Arduino board is represented by a special kind of sprite. The Arduino sprite will automatically find the usb port where the board is connected.

It is possible to connect to multiple boards at the same time by just adding a new Arduino sprite.

S4A works with Arduino Diecimila, Duemilanove and Uno.

S4A allows for 6 analog inputs (analog pins), 2 digital inputs (digital pins 2 and 3), 3 analog outputs (digital pins 5, 6 and 9), 3 digital outputs (pins 10, 11 and 13) and 4 special outputs to connect Parallax continuous rotation servomotors (digital pins 4, 7, 8 and 12).

You can manage a board wirelessly by attaching an RF module to it, such as Xbee.

S4A allows you to control as many boards as USB ports you have.

S4A is backwards compatible with Scratch, so you can open Scratch projects in it.

S4A interacts with Arduino by sending the actuator states and receiving sensor states every 75 ms, therefore the pulse width needs to be greater than this time period. The data exchange follows the PicoBoard protocol and needs a specific program (firmware) to be installed in the board.

This Computer Language Is Feeding Hacker Values into Young Minds
https://backchannel.com/the-kids-computer-language-that-became-a-mind-bomb-for-the-hacker-ethic-a0b7e42c229d

At 10, Scratch is a popular tool to teach kids programming. But its real glory is how it imparts lessons in sharing, logic, and hackerism.

Pygame
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygame

Pygame is a cross-platform set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It includes computer graphics and sound libraries designed to be used with the Python programming language. It is built over the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library

This is based on the assumption that the most expensive functions inside games (mainly the graphics part) can be abstracted from the game logic, making it possible to use a high-level programming language, such as Python, to structure the game.

Pygame applications can run on Android phones and tablets with the use of Pygame Subset for Android (pgs4a).

http://www.pygame.org/hifi.html