Hour of AI at home: free activities for kids, with a plan by age (2026)

The Hour of AI is the free, one-hour introduction to artificial intelligence that replaced Code.org's Hour of Code in 2025, and in 2026 it centres on Computer Science Education Week, 7 to 11 December. Anyone can take part, at school or at home, any time of year. Below is what it is, where the activities live, and a ready-made hour for three age bands (4 to 6, 7 to 9, 10 to 13), minute by minute, with questions to talk about afterwards.

This guide is from Peabody (peabody.kids), a free reading and learning site for kids, free through the end of 2026. Peabody isn't part of the Hour of AI, none of the activities below are ours, and nobody paid to be listed. Every link was opened in October 2026.

The plan at a glance

Each plan ends with ten minutes of talking. That part matters most. The point of an Hour of AI isn't to finish an activity. It's for a child to walk away knowing that a computer only learns from the examples people give it, and that it can be wrong.

What is the Hour of AI?

The Hour of AI is a yearly push to give every learner one hour of hands-on AI. Its own site calls it a free global initiative, for learners "from pre-readers to adults". It grew out of the Hour of Code, the one-hour coding tutorials that reached tens of millions of students in more than 180 countries.

Code.org announced it in October 2025, launched in partnership with CSforALL, and ran the first one during Computer Science Education Week that December. In June 2026 Code.org renamed itself CodeAI. It is still a nonprofit and still at code.org. Its Hour of AI page now says the Hour of Code "is now the Hour of AI", and the official FAQ says it is organised by CodeAI "and a coalition of partners".

The old Hour of Code activities haven't gone anywhere. They sit on the Hour of AI site under "Legacy Hour of Code activities", so a child who loved Dance Party or Minecraft last year can still find them.

When is Hour of AI 2026?

As of October 2026, the official Hour of AI how-to guide gives these dates:

• 27 October: a live how-to webinar for organisers.
• 16 November: this year's new activities launch.
• 7 to 11 December 2026: Computer Science Education Week, the main event.

The FAQ is clear that the activities work all year, so you don't have to wait for December. If your child's school is running one that week, this guide gives you something to do at home too.

Where to find Hour of AI activities

There are two official front doors:

• Hour of AI activities: the full catalogue, with activities for different ages and for classrooms with or without devices.
• Code.org's Hour of AI page: CodeAI's own activities. As of October 2026 it lists AI for Oceans (grades 3 to 12), Mix & Move with AI (grades 2 to 12), Music Lab: Jam Session (grades 2 to 12), Minecraft tutorials (grades 2 to 12), Dance Party: AI Edition (grades 3 to 8) and Intro to Web Lab (grades 8 to 12).

Partners add their own activities to the catalogue, and each one sets its own rules about accounts and data. Preview anything before your child starts.

Do kids need an account? Is it free?

Signing up on the Hour of AI site is optional; it only gets you reminders and an early look at new activities. The activities in this guide are free and need no account: Quick, Draw! and Teachable Machine have no sign-in at all, and AI for Oceans lets a child sign in to save progress but doesn't require it. Day of AI's full lesson materials need a free teacher registration.

One thing to know before you start: every drawing made in Quick, Draw! joins a public collection of doodles Google shares with researchers, and Teachable Machine uses the camera or microphone (Google says the training can stay on your device).

Ages 4 to 6: a gentle hour, mostly off screen

Common Sense Media advises no AI chatbots at five and under, because young children can't fully tell AI apart from real people. Nothing in this hour is a chatbot, and most of it is on the floor.

1. Minutes 0 to 10: what is a machine? Read Peabody's AI explained for 7-year-olds aloud, or just walk round the house and point at machines. Is the kettle alive? Is the cat? This is the same idea as Day of AI's Pre-K unit, People, Nature, and Machines, which has children sort things found in nature from things people made.
2. Minutes 10 to 25: teach the robot (no screen). You are the robot. Your child shows you toys one at a time and tells you "animal" or "not animal". After five, you start guessing the next one, and you guess some wrong on purpose ("A teddy bear has fur, so it's a cat!"). Then swap: your child is the robot. They have just done what a machine-learning model does.
3. Minutes 25 to 40: Quick, Draw! together. The game names a word, you have 20 seconds to draw it, and a neural network guesses aloud. With a four- or five-year-old, you draw and they shout what it is before the computer does. Children six and up can draw themselves.
4. Minutes 40 to 50: printed unplugged games. AI Unplugged has free printable card and board games about how computers decide, in several languages. Pick one card game and play a round.
5. Minutes 50 to 60: talk, then a story. Use the questions below. If you like, finish by reading a short story together on Peabody, at your child's reading level.

Talk about it:

• How did the computer know your drawing was a cat?
• When the robot (you) got it wrong, what did it need?
• Is the computer alive? How do you know?

Ages 7 to 9: draw, then teach an ocean robot

1. Minutes 0 to 5: a question to start. Ask: "How do you think a computer learns what a fish looks like?" Write down the answer and come back to it at the end.
2. Minutes 5 to 15: Quick, Draw!. Play a few rounds. Then open the drawings it got wrong. Why did it miss? Was the drawing odd, or had the computer seen too few like it?
3. Minutes 15 to 50: AI for Oceans. Code.org's activity on training data, for grade 3 and up, in more than 25 languages, and about 40 minutes long. A child labels pictures as "fish" or "not fish" to train an AI that cleans the sea, then picks their own labels and watches the AI copy their mistakes. With a seven-year-old, sit beside them and read the instructions aloud. The AI for Oceans guide has more on running it.
4. Minutes 50 to 60: talk. Look back at the answer from minute 0. Did it change?

Talk about it:

• What happened when you gave the AI bad examples?
• Who decides what counts as a fish? The computer, or the person training it?
• Can you think of an AI at home or school that learned from examples?

For a child who wants more, Google's AI games and Code.org's Dance Party: AI Edition (grades 3 to 8, on the Hour of AI page) are next steps.

Ages 10 to 13: build a model, then pick a challenge

1. Minutes 0 to 5: set a goal. "By the end of the hour you'll have trained an AI yourself."
2. Minutes 5 to 30: Teachable Machine. Make an image project with two classes, say "thumbs up" and "thumbs down". Hold up each one to the webcam a few dozen times, train, and test it live. Then try to break it: a different background, a sibling's hand, a glove. Our Teachable Machine guide walks through it.
3. Minutes 30 to 50: their choice from the catalogue. Let them pick one from the Hour of AI activities: Dance Party: AI Edition if they like music and dance, a Minecraft tutorial if they like building, or Mix & Move with AI. For a classroom-style lesson instead, Experience AI's Discovering AI is a single lesson for ages 8 to 12, from the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind.
4. Minutes 50 to 60: talk. Ask them to explain to you how their model worked. Teaching it back is the best check that it went in.

Talk about it:

• Why did your model get confused by the new background?
• If a company trained a model on photos of only some kinds of people, what could go wrong?
• When should you not trust an AI's answer?

For a twelve- or thirteen-year-old already using chatbots, read is ChatGPT safe for kids? together afterwards.

Running an Hour of AI in class

The official how-to guide gives a simple shape for teachers, and it works well:

Some practical notes:

• No devices? Still fine. The FAQ lists unplugged activities, pair work and projector-led whole-class play.
• Choose by grade. For K to 2, Day of AI's Kindergarten and Grade 1 units are short, ready-made lessons (Grade 1's are unplugged); you'll need a free teacher registration for the slides and guides. For grade 3 and up, AI for Oceans is the easy default. For middle school, Experience AI or Teachable Machine.
• Check each activity's data rules. Partner activities differ. Teachable Machine and Quick, Draw! need no sign-in; anything that asks for student accounts should go through your school's usual approval.
• Keep going. The how-to guide's last step is to follow up with more activities or courses. Where to learn about AI has about seventy free, checked links sorted by age.

Where Peabody fits (and where it doesn't)

Peabody isn't an Hour of AI activity, and it doesn't teach how AI works. It's a reading and learning site where the stories are written by AI at a child's reading level and screened for safety before a child sees them. There's no open chatbot (its one chat is short and screened, for 3rd grade and up), and the math questions are made and marked by code, not AI.

That makes it a nice ending to the hour. With your child, make a story on the free AI story generator from a few ideas they pick, then read it together and ask: "Who wrote this? How did the AI know what to write? What would a person have done differently?" It turns the hour's big idea, that AI makes things from patterns in examples, into something they can hold.

Using Peabody in your homeschool

A homeschool can run the Hour of AI on any day, and Computer Science Education Week in December makes a natural date for a co-op or a few families together. Use the plan for your oldest child's age band and let younger siblings join the unplugged parts. Peabody fits the last ten minutes: make one story together on the free AI story generator and talk about who wrote it. The next day, go back to normal reading with a library story at your child's level, 10 to 15 minutes. The honest limit: Peabody teaches no AI lessons and records nothing from these activities, so keep certificates or screenshots for your portfolio (homeschool record keeping). See AI in homeschooling and the homeschool hub.

Learn more elsewhere

• Hour of AI how-to guide: the official five steps, from picking an activity to celebrating, with this year's dates.
• Hour of AI FAQ: who runs it, when, and what to do without computers.
• AI literacy toolkit for families: three short "What is AI?" videos and talk cards from Common Sense and Day of AI, in English and Spanish.
• Day of AI curriculum: free AI units from Pre-K to grade 12, from the team that started at MIT RAISE. Our Day of AI guide for parents explains them.

Questions parents ask

What is the Hour of AI?

The Hour of AI is a free, worldwide event in which learners of any age spend one hour on hands-on artificial intelligence activities. Code.org (renamed CodeAI in June 2026) launched it with CSforALL in 2025 as the successor to the Hour of Code. It centres on Computer Science Education Week each December, but the activities work any time.

When is Hour of AI 2026?

As of October 2026, the official Hour of AI how-to guide gives Computer Science Education Week as 7 to 11 December 2026, with new activities launching on 16 November. You can run an Hour of AI on any other day too; the activities stay up all year.

Is the Hour of AI the same as the Hour of Code?

It replaced it. Code.org's Hour of AI page says the Hour of Code is now the Hour of AI. The old Hour of Code tutorials are still available on the Hour of AI site, listed as legacy activities, so children can keep using them.

Do kids need an account for the Hour of AI?

No. Signing up on the Hour of AI site is optional and only brings reminders. Each activity has its own rules: Quick, Draw! and Teachable Machine need no sign-in, AI for Oceans lets children sign in to save progress but doesn't require it, and Day of AI's full lesson materials need a free teacher registration.

What age is the Hour of AI for?

Every age. The official FAQ says the activities run from pre-readers to adults. In practice, four- to six-year-olds do best with unplugged games and a grown-up beside them, AI for Oceans suits grade 3 and up, and Teachable Machine works well from about age 10, or younger with a grown-up.

Can we do the Hour of AI at home?

Yes. The FAQ names homes among the places it serves and says to join with whatever resources you have. A family can use the same free activities as a classroom: pick one by age, sit beside your child, and leave ten minutes at the end to talk about what the AI got right and wrong.

Are Hour of AI games safe for children?

The main activities are built for schools, and the ones in this guide don't involve chatting with an AI. Two data points to know: drawings made in Quick, Draw! join a public dataset, and Teachable Machine uses the camera or microphone. Partner activities in the catalogue set their own rules, so preview each one first.