Sure, but many kids won't have the patience to play with PIO. The Arduino experience to make a LED blink is literally connect the device, copy paste the blinker

Sure, but many kids won't have the patience to play with PIO. The Arduino experience to make a LED blink is literally connect the device, copy paste the blinker code into the big text box, select the device and port in the tools menu, click upload, done. That can be done in a few minutes without any of the kids getting too bored.