Correctly describing electromagnetics involves invoking vector calculus, which is a tall order for 10 year old children even in education systems more rigorous than America's.
Kids have a pretty good mechanical model of swing sets.
That point aside, while an intuitive understanding is nice, power factor is really a mathematical construct arising from the multiplication of two out-of-phase sinusoids (i.e. voltage and current).
I think to really understand active / reactive power and pf, you need to look at the maths. It's really not that difficult. And you certainly don't need to know vector calculus, merely high school trig.