thank you all for your recommendations. i'm going to go with joseph ehlers suggestion and look more deeply into "Computer Programming is Fun" since it's *exactly* what it was after. joseph, great job reading my mind!! to answer some of the other's, this is for a real school course not an after school class. and i really do want to teach the real python language, not a variant, logo, turtle, scratch, etc. CPIF seems very well thought out and professional. and IMO which you may or not agree with me and that's ok :), is i think it's great that the author brought the lesson plans down to an introductory level without "dummying down" or "watering down" the language. it's still python, using the python interpreter and still 100% applicable to the real world as-is. joseph, how many lessons do you make out of the book? do you give homework assignments or is it all done in class? i only have enough time and money to teach 1 class, 1 hour per week. that's really why i suggested the minimum requirement be algebra because i need to filter down the number of kids that would want to take the class. but like i said before, i can filter the kids down anyway i want. maybe algebra isn't the best way to do it. but i have to do something that is fair and reasonable. i'm not a teacher by trade, i design and architect software for a living and i have been evangelizing python for many years now and getting python projects started throughout the companies i've worked for. my company gives us paid time off to volunteer anything we want and i thought this would be a great opportunity to teach python to kids. it's great to have a language that you can develop sophisticated professional level programs with, and at the same time be able to teach an introductory level class for kids. i wish i learned python as my first programming language instead of TRS-80 BASIC. thanks, bryan