Raspberry Pi was designed with the stated intention of winding back the clock to the days when you had to understand a fair about computing to make them work. Typing in the program in BASIC was a pretty standard way to get a game to play. That's how I learned to code on my Dragon 32 (remember that? thought not)

I bought a Raspberry Pi for my kids (8 & 6) and it works well but actually we also have tablets, smart phones, laptops ... So really the compelling reason to use the Pi isn't there. So now it is hiding unused under the sofa in our front room.

If you want your kids to learn to code then I would heartily recommend this Lightbot App as a start. It is great fun. It looks great and it has with some programming fundamentals designed in to the games. It seems there is a follow on App which I will download tonight to do with them.