I have a 34month old and 4yo, and this has inspired me to give them a old machine tonight. They will love 'sl'. I will also try the xmonad and tuxpaint stuff with the 4yo. She will like having her own computer and will be tickled to be 'working' like Daddy. They use an iPad sometimes, but I'll be interested to see how they feel about typing on keys and using a trackpad to paint with (the mouse doesn't get used).
The 4 yo was excited about getting a computer, but didn't care at all about using it. She just didn't 'get' the steam locomotive. She was willing to participate (and was interested) in typing characters on the screen and having something happen, but I just didn't have enough at an appropriate level to maintain her interest. I had hoped to work up to the gui and tuxpaint, but we didn't get that far before she completely gave up. I think there would've been (general) merit in this approach, but there's just not enough command line apps that are suited to this age group. The 2yo could also make the train go, but he didn't recognize it as a train. It was probably too fast to decipher the ascii art.
Somewhat strangely, starting the following day, the 4yo started calling her fake baby cell phone a 'computer' and is really in to pretending to do things on it. Crazy stuff like talking about how well she's doing at playing videos games. We don't play any video games in our house. It's as though I unlocked some possibility of having her own computer and her mind is running with it.
