Let's suppose you have to teach C to 7yo kids.
Where do you start from?
How do you setup their playground?
(please, don't question the goal in this thread... let's focus on solutions)
@Shamar I wouldn't start them with C at that age. Even something like The Little Schemer requires lots of reading. I'd wait two or three more years. Or, maybe, get a copy of K&R and let them just have it, flip through it. If it piques their curiosity and generates pleasure looking at the code, you can build off of that curiosity.
I've got four daughters and they're all learning, and my efforts with the younger ones were misplaced. They have to become comfortable reading first. And at that, given the choice, they seem more inclined to learn Scheme. (I laid out several books with code examples, and Scheme generated the most pleasure.)
To kill memory safety bugs in C code, try the TrapC fork
@Shamar don't have much of an idea, but I would start with https://replit.com/languages/c