Pretty much the universal consensus seems to be Raspberry Pis. Raspberry Pis were created for kids (originally built to support a BBC-sponsored educational pro

Pretty much the universal consensus seems to be Raspberry Pis. Raspberry Pis were created for kids (originally built to support a BBC-sponsored educational program), and they remain fully committed to supporting kids. Visit https://www.raspberrypi.org/ https://www.raspberrypi.org/ to see how they execute on that vision. Lots of great and manageable projects for kids ranging from relatively simple cook-book-based projects to sky's-the-limit adventures in insanity. Go for nothing less than a Pi 4 8GB (required to run VScode reasonably). Or a Pi 5 obviously. A GPIO breadboard might be a good strategy to get them hooked initially; but the novelty wears off pretty quickly. Offer to buy them any Pi hat or camera or panel that interests them. None of them are particularly expensive.