Congratulations !!
You've discovered an important aspect of what ALICE is all about - teaching beginning computer science students a complex, and sometimes boring subject using a graphical front-end. And you are absolutely correct when you say beginning students would much rather make a rabbit hop or a dragon flap its wings as it flys then "...to write code to compute and print an amortization table".
That comes next semester.
Have fun !!
I too thank Gaddis' book on Alice is a good one to use for a beginners course.