This exactly... my first "coding experience" in early-mid elementary school was "programming" magazine games (written in BASIC) into a TRS-80, as well as making

This exactly... my first "coding experience" in early-mid elementary school was "programming" magazine games (written in BASIC) into a TRS-80, as well as making cute animations in Logo on a TI 99/4A. Nothing ground-breaking, but there's incentives (fun!) and it introduces you to the principles. For a modern equivalent, I've seen my sister's kids (also in early-mid elementary school) currently making games and animations in Scratch. I'm sure it's easy to make coding dry and boring as well, of course.