I've always thought that the f and t motions along with I and A to switch to insert mode, and . (repeat) should be included in the basic motions and text objects should be the next step.
They're relatively simple to remember and you can string them together to accomplish a lot more than the character-wise to word-wise motion progression I've seen in most vim intros.
Learn the basics first:
1. Basic movement (h l k j)
2. Insertion mode (i), deletion (x), selections/visual Mode (v), copying/yank (y), pasting/put (p), and exit insertion mode (esc)
Once you learn those the rest is pretty easy to pick up.
I should warn you though, once you get used to the key commands it's hard to go back to another editor.