Actual child! My niece :) (well, all except for the tantrum yelling xD)
Good note on less random generation! I haven't looked much into best practices on how to do this well (like maybe making it so no more than, say, three of the same item?), but it can definitely completely change a player's perceptions on first playthrough.
Go with simple for Game Jam (or generally in life ;) ).
You have 6 slots, not sure how many items, so lets put each item twice in an array. Shuffle it and pick 6 from the front. For next generation do this again (simpler) or if you feel there's benefit in that use what's left and add whole new shuffled batch if necessary (<6 items left)
