Its like giving a kid who wants to be a chef an easy bake oven and some prepak mixes. It technically involves cooking, so ...
Or giving a kid who wants to learn about computers an ipod. It does have a CPU inside, doesn't it?
I basically listed what I remember of my lab drawer contents from undergrad quant class. I could see having a lot of fun with less stuff.
Another aspect of hacking / startup / makerspace type activities is making a moderately crude instrument. For example a spectrophotometer with bad but usable specs could probably be made as an arduino shield using a light tight box, an incandescent bulb, a log converter feeding the A/D of the arduino, and a glass prism sitting on a servo controlled by the arduino. And some software.
Or instead of burrets, a digital model using a syringe (no needle needed) and a screw and nut hooked up to a stepper motor driven by arduino. So given a syringe of 1M vinegar or whatever you can squirt out any precision volume.
A PH meter shield for an arduino sounds too simple and obvious to even mention. There are more elaborate potentiometer systems where you measure the voltage required to shove a certain current thru a solution and so forth, stuff I don't remember as well.
As far as budget goes, I don't think you can do "real" chemistry without at least a decent scale and some kind of volumetric measurement tool (a grad cylinder if nothing else? A set of volumetric flasks?)
If you insist on "chemistry without numbers" you may as well just mix different colors of kool aide powder for all you'll learn.