I haven’t had a great deal of success in getting my 8 year old daughter to play go. When she was between 4 and 5, she had fun moving the stones around, but as soon as she realized that there was strategy involved and stuff to be won and lost, she balked. Maybe I can get her back into it around 10-12 yrs old, but for now she’s having none of it.
Having said that, I have come up with a fast-game variant that I use to introduce new players. The idea came to from playing against GnuGo when was 20-24kyu - time and time again, I’d already lost the game by move 50 because I didn’t know how to play a balanced opening
So, in my quick game variant, each player ONLY GETS 25 STONES.
This forces you to think in terms of playing a balanced game rather than duking it out for a single corner, and it introduces the basic concepts to folks quickly, so that they can start to grasp the idea of whole-board play. Plus, it only take about 5 minutes per game.
It’s a handy tool to have around because playing a whole 19x19 game is often too intimidating to beginners.