There are some great resources with arduino devices and arduino.cc - though it might be a little tricky for 7. I suppose it depends on the kid. Getting some light kits from adafruit and some prebuilt scripts can help, though. Wearable LED tags are a pretty clout-earning trinket for the 7-year-old set.
Thonny http://thonny.org is fun browser based tool for learning things as simple as turtle graphics (anyone else start with LOGO?) or even up to more fully developed programs.
My kid and some of her friends did some video game design using the "Bloxels" game, but the (free) app makes the actual box of color pixels mostly irrelevant. I think this is a great way to think of tile based gaming structure and layout in a GUI format without the burden of command line. It's the same sort of appeal as Minecraft target audiences.
Thonny http://thonny.org is fun browser based tool for learning things as simple as turtle graphics (anyone else start with LOGO?) or even up to more fully developed programs.
My kid and some of her friends did some video game design using the "Bloxels" game, but the (free) app makes the actual box of color pixels mostly irrelevant. I think this is a great way to think of tile based gaming structure and layout in a GUI format without the burden of command line. It's the same sort of appeal as Minecraft target audiences.