[dancek]

Or an UPduino which is still cheaper. I've had good experiences with one, though I'm only at the "PWM-animated LED" stage right now.

Oh, and https://www.nand2tetris.org is great. You implement a simple CPU, and though the language isn't a real-world one you learn enough to probably be able to implement a similar CPU on an FPGA using VHDL or Verilog.