You should consider talking to a few teachers and find out what skills 
the kids are expected to have by the time they enter 5th grade, and what 
is being taught at this level.

A reason basic is such a strong contender at this age is that following 
instructions carefully, exactly, and in order is constantly taught and 
revisited throughout elementary school.  Further it has very low 
requirements for typesetting - no braces, special indentation, etc.  
Even the control statements make sense in english.

The other reason is that it has instant gratification.  Press a button 
or two and it runs the program, pausing when done.  Only logo does this 
better, with a native graphical output where you can see the results of 
your 'run'.  Using an environment that requires more than two steps to 
run a program is going to be a disincentive.

I'm certian that simplified Java, C, Python could be taught at this 
level, but you need to discuss skills and teaching topics with a 
knowledgabe instructor so you can find common ground.  Object oriented 
and event triggered programming is not overly intellectual, but you need 
to find skills the kids already have that can be applied so they 
understand quickly what an object is, methods and data, and 
inheritance.  "The grocerystore object has a shopping cart that you can 
put things into and out of, and a checkout method that returns the total 
value."  Even when simplified it may take some serious thought on your 
part to make it click for them.

Strongly typed languages are a hinderance - they shouldn't need to know 
if a variable is supposed to hold a number of a letter, it should be 
whatever type of data they assign to it.  It becomes confusing when they 
have to remember that there are even 2-3 different types of variables 
and you can't mix them arbitrarily.

Likewise they will constantly be running into {}; problems and == vs = 
problems in most 'modern' languages.

But it really depends on what you're trying to teach them, and what they 
already know.

-Adam

William Chops Westfield wrote:

> So what does one use for teaching basic programming to kids these days.
> (pre-algebraic 5th graders, to be specific.)  I haven't heard anything
> about LOGO in a long time, and Pascal seems a bit dated and uncommon.
> Java?  Are there any good java books and/or environments aimed at kids
> this age?
>
> BillW
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