I work with 4th-9th grade girls teaching them code, and recommend this to them to work on over the summer! It's a great curriculum and does an awesome job pulling children in!
Does it require proprietary tools? Would like to use Linux and possibly Blender, but classes at school often use whatever big-tech tools they cut a backroom deal for.
Even if you aren't taking these classes, you can sign up for a free non-commercial license for Render Man. It comes with the full feature-set of the commercial version and there aren't any academic attendance requirements. While Renderman can also be installed on Linux, I can't personally vouch for feature parity with the Windows version as I haven't made the comparison myself.
Nuke also has a hobbyist license. No watermarking or end date, but there are limitations on output.