Kids need a motive. With a motive, they'll figure things out, you don't have to handhold them every step or create broken abstractions for them to play around in then get bored.

We already have "visual/physical programming" for kids, in the form of Minecraft. And for the kids who want to go the extra mile, well, they learn Java. Not enough Java they could work at BigCo, because they learn Java with the motive to do stuff in Minecraft, not to actually understand the semantics of Java -- but if they got bored with Minecraft, their retained Java knowledge would be enough that they could then teach themselves the more formal aspects, or even another language.

Kids don't want to know the difference between '=' and '==' and '==='.