I wrote this http://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ and http://ruby.learncodethehardway.org/ and am now working on this http://c.learncodethehardway.org/ so I'll give you advice that fits with what I've been doing to teach people:

1. Do every exercise, type in every bit of code, DO NOT COPY-PASTE.

2. Make the code run, fix all the bugs.

3. Repeat until you are done. Do it 1-3 hours a night.

That's it. It's an old method: repetition and practice to build base fundamentals so you can apply them to more complex problems. For the very beginner this works better because the topics are incredibly simple, but their experience and understanding needs work. By making them just type it in, then explain it, I get them experienced and bust through a lot of fears about learning something new.

Hope that helps.