There's a website that provides very detailed tutorials for Arduino kits. Their tutorials contain the most basic electronics and programming knowledge, and even have projects that interact with Processing.
Even if you don't buy their products you are also allowed to download their tutorials and codes.
Here is the website:
http://www.freenove.com/
And here is their online store:
http://stores.ebay.com/freenove
Interesting. I've been working on something similar; perhaps we should chat 
I've been putting together a Scratch-like IDE for programming Arduino, and I'm trying to build up a nice collection of tutorials with it that cover different sensors.
I don't have too much content yet, but take a peek and drop me a line if you'd like to chat. So far there's an HC-SR04 Ultrasonic Distance Finder tutorial and a tutorial on working with addressable led strings. I'm hoping to have something up there for Servos in the next couple days.
My goal is to lower the programming knowledge needed for kids to start building cool stuff.
Anyway, drop me a line if you'd like to chat
Kyle
Thank you so much for providing such helpful links. I am new to Arduino kits.