[1] http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful...
[1] http://livecode.com/download/ [2] http://apps.microsoft.com/windows/en-us/app/microsoft-projec...
If you don't like that analogy, consider how children often learn the basics of woodworking or sewing through small projects that might not be useful or even be completed. Programming could work the same way.
>"What would you expect a
>nine year old to accomplish
>regarding writing and drawing?
Beyond self-expression, children could learn the basics of
* interaction design ("'Click here' doesn't explain what a button does"),
* debugging ("It's okay to be wrong at first. I can just keep fixing it until it works")
* and geometry ("I can make a shape look more like a circle if I give it more sides").
EDIT: Here's a neat example of HyperCard's power: http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568. It's a bit complicated for a child, but it gives you a sense of HyperCard's potential.
So I would expect a 9 year old to be able to write simple programs, drawing simple 2D figures or question/answer programs.
I also had fun composing really bad melodies with the HyperCard sound command (that let you enter notes - it'd scale whatever sound effect in pitch)
edit: the greatest learning tools for me were all the included sample stacks. Tearing apart and editing those and the code that made them tick was an amazing learning experience ("oh! so instead of making 50 buttons, I can make one button, and do this thing with the mouse position and some math [something they make me do in school that I otherwise find pointless] and figure out which section was clicked!")
10 print "my name"
20 goto 10
"Learning About Smalltalk" http://www.atariarchives.org/bcc1/showpage.php?page=61
"My name is Marian Goldeen. (...) I would like to tell you about how I got started working with computers at Xerox and the class I taught."