I'm torn on this one (Score 1)

On one hand, Java is modern, well designed, comprehensive, and platform independant, which could do a good job teaching fundamentals all the way through most any project, at which point its similarities to C++ would be of great help as well. However, the difficulty of distributing Java apps to the average associate of a 10 year old is quite a disadvantage. As interesting as any project may be, there's nothing like the satisfaction of seeing your friends enjoy the fruit of your labor along with you. If you want to crank out interesting, professional looking, user-friendly apps from the get go there's nothing like VB. Actually, if you could let them at both Java via a plain old text editor and VB via the wizz-bangness that is Visual Studio it'd be interesting to see how they take to each. Whatever you do, don't just stick em with some "fring" language. They'll thank you for it later.