As a child (age ~10) I had a "Young Chemist" set, which included dry NaOH, some acids, potassium permanganate, magnesium metal and a lot of various colourful sa

As a child (age ~10) I had a "Young Chemist" set, which included dry NaOH, some acids, potassium permanganate, magnesium metal and a lot of various colourful salts. It came with a book that listed experiments, specifying which required adults and I had to promise to stick to that rule. Long before that I had a pocket knife (everybody did) and we played knife games with the lads (throwing knives into the ground in various ways, no I don't remember any injuries). Today's children are much more deprived of the chance to be dangerous to themselves or others and therefore have much less scope to decide to not do harm. Do your children a favour, give them the option to do bad things and teach them not to. Apropos chemistry itself, it's still what it was 40 years ago and all of the chemicals the old sets had are available on Ebay, and scans of old BoMs and manuals are available online, so you can get your kids all the excitement of yesteryear without breaking bank (on par with an AAA game title).