It's a tool. Another creative outlet. I bought my kids ipads and apple pencils and they love them. My eldest, now at university bought a new iPad Pro recently and uses that exclusively as her work computer.
What you're doing is enforcing a semi-luddite position on your own kids because you can only leave them unattended with old things. Just be a parent ffs.
My child is 4. They prefer fruit and vegetables over sweets. Milk or water over soft drinks. They come home from nursery and, in the warmer months, play outside with their friends until 7pm. They also draw and do "craft", and we do "science" together (make slime etc). They also have a base model iPad.
It's locked down using a combination of Apple's parental controls, controls on the router and NextDNS. The level of pedagogic software available on the platform is excellent, especially for preschool. There are also other 'games', like Crayola's Create and Play[0] app (available for Android too) which are fun, engaging, creative and educational.
Like it or not, this is the world they are going to grow up in. It's the parents job to teach them to be responsible with everything, from sweets to using technology. Kids aged 3-12 can get as much out of a device like an iPad as any teenager.
What you're doing is enforcing a semi-luddite position on your own kids because you can only leave them unattended with old things. Just be a parent ffs.