For my granddaughter's Christmas present, I got her a Singer kids machine. It was a piece of junk. When we returned it, we saw several others just like it that had been returned. I was shocked that Singer would actually put their name on such junk.
We ended up teaching her and her brothers to sew on a real machine after creating a wire finger guard to help avoid sewing over fingers. The grands are 7, 7, and 9 years old and they learned how to thread the machine, wind a bobbin, and sew. They started out sewing on paper napkins.
My sister taught her grands to sew using lines drawn on paper, sewing without thread. Then they gradually moved up to sewing on fabric. My 8 year old great niece is making her very own quilt. :)