I had a pair of Brines Acoustics speakers with a metal grill that strike me as pretty kid friendly; in fact, I sold then to a friend with young kids, who loves them.
They were a good sized tower that would be hard to tip, but not so heavy as to cause fatalities if they did. The build quality was nice, but not fussy; not the sort of finish where you freak if anyone touches it. My model had big ports -- I'd not thought of the port filling issue before -- but big enough that an adult hand could fish out toys.
I'd rate them pretty highly for kid-safe, and a pair built to your specs with this in mind would likely be 2-2.5k.
They sound very good (I didn't notice a difference with the metal grills on/off) -- and Bob Brines describes some of his models as having "vintage" sound, but they are single driver designs, which have strong pluses and minuses. (Mine went pretty deep; interestingly, my complaint was about a regions higher up.) But since it sounds like you are thinking of these as interim speakers, you could have fun in single driver land for a few years, and then move on if so inclined.
In short, recommended; definitely worth it to contact Bob Brines, who is a helpful guy. There's also a couple of users here, I think, if you scout systems.
Let us know how it turns out!
