I have a radical suggestion, and a touch of disagreement with my esteemed brethren.

Some observations about children: they pick up language and patterns easily. They dislike sustained projects (though they often are obsessive about an interest). To them, the real game is learning the rules, not making a product.

What do you think of teaching text manipulation and regexes? Start with tr///, a Secret Decoder Ring. She can have fun with literals: s/Fido/Gimlet-Eyed Guardian/; s/Father/Couch Creature/; s/cat/dog/ .. hehe dogalog. Hmm.. can we avoid that? Time to find out about word boundaries

I think she needs no relevant project, just to learn the syntax and enjoy making lots of tiny programs. Like any other language, she will soon stitch together what she's learned into programs you never dreamed of.

Even experts like to do their learning on tiny irrelevant programs -- hence golf, obfu and poetry.

After Compline,
Zaxo