[rajadigopula]

Don't.

The best way is to let them expand their creativity and problem solving skills. Some decent puzzle books and toys will do.

Programming is just using some 'keyword' based programming languages to tell computer how to solve problems.

5-10 is a good age to expand the skills in so many fronts. Just don't limit your kids to learn some simple keywords/loop constructs etc.- which they can learn pretty quickly at any age later.

[justjash]

I will agree with this. I think the problem solving aspect is much more beneficial than actually programming. If you have great problem solving/critical thinking skill then converting those into some program is trivial.

I also think 5 is a little young... I'd be more afraid of turning a child off to the concept due to it being boring. My son is now 11 and they started doing some Scratch programming at school last year and he thinks it is pretty cool. It has also triggered some interest in him wondering what I do at work especially if I work from home and have something pulled up in Eclipse.