I learn best fiddling first and theory later. Check out the DE0 Nano. Cyclone IV with ram, buttons, leds, eeprom, accelerometer, adc, header breakouts, under $100.

Any fpga dev kit in that class will work. I was able to jump right into it with the basic examples and had my own hardware uart up in a couple weeks.

The only downside is when I was using it the software was only for windows and very bloated.