+1. Scratch indeed is very flexible environment for that (even younger) age group.
Lots of interactive ideas could be easily implemented with already available assets (sprites, backgrounds, sounds), customized too. It's more tooled for platformers. There are many nice tutorials (loadable projects). Tons of books (we used 'Super skills. How to code').
The other day this 8yo even had to face first ever concurrency bug - the race condition. Alas there are no ready mutexes as such in Scratch, but we found a way to synchronize the execution.
At times I did feel that it'd be faster to just type the code, but the kid actually felt more in control doing all the needed coding with touch/mouse.
Also the projects/games are shareable, so friends can load that too.
Lots of interactive ideas could be easily implemented with already available assets (sprites, backgrounds, sounds), customized too. It's more tooled for platformers. There are many nice tutorials (loadable projects). Tons of books (we used 'Super skills. How to code').
The other day this 8yo even had to face first ever concurrency bug - the race condition. Alas there are no ready mutexes as such in Scratch, but we found a way to synchronize the execution.
At times I did feel that it'd be faster to just type the code, but the kid actually felt more in control doing all the needed coding with touch/mouse.
Also the projects/games are shareable, so friends can load that too.