Where to learn about AI: the best free sites for kids, parents and teachers
Free places to learn what AI is, try it hands-on, keep a child safe with it and read the honest evidence on AI and learning. Every link checked in October 2026.
The best free places to learn about AI are Google's Teachable Machine and Code.org's AI for Oceans for kids to try, the Common Sense and Day of AI family toolkit for parents, Experience AI and Code.org's How AI Works for lessons, Common Sense's AI risk assessments for safety, and Stanford SCALE's 2026 review for the honest evidence. Below are about seventy links, sorted by who they're for, each with a line on what you actually do there. Every link was opened on 18 October 2026, and the ones that need an account or keep what a child makes say so.
This list is kept by Peabody (peabody.kids), a free reading and learning site for kids, free through the end of 2026. None of these sites pays to be here, and Peabody isn't on the list. If one of them is a better fit for your child today, use it.
The short list
If you only open five:
| Who | Start here | Why |
|---|---|---|
| A child, 8 and up | Teachable Machine | Teach a computer to tell a thumbs-up from a thumbs-down in one minute, and you've seen how machine learning works |
| A child, 6 and up | Quick, Draw! | Doodle, and a neural network guesses what it is |
| A parent | AI literacy toolkit for families | Three short "What is AI?" videos, talk cards and home activities, in English and Spanish |
| A parent choosing an app | Common Sense AI risk assessments | Independent tests of the chatbots and AI products kids actually use |
| Anyone asking "does it work?" | Stanford SCALE: the evidence on AI in K-12 | Of more than 800 papers, about 20 were strong causal studies; this says what they found |
Try AI with your hands (for kids)
Doing beats reading here. Ten minutes of training a model teaches more than an hour of explanation, and the child sees for themselves that the computer only knows what it was shown.
- Teachable Machine (Google, about 8 and up with a grown-up, no account). Show the webcam or microphone a few examples of two things, and it learns to tell them apart live. It uses the camera and mic; Google says the training can stay on your device.
- Quick, Draw! (Google, 6 and up, no account). Twenty seconds to draw a word while the computer guesses. Worth knowing: every doodle joins a public collection of drawings Google shares with researchers.
- AI for Oceans (Code.org, grade 3 and up, sign-in optional). Teach an AI which things are fish and which are rubbish, then choose your own labels and watch it pick up your mistakes. About 40 minutes, in more than 25 languages.
- Machine Learning for Kids (the site gives no age range; it builds on Scratch, so roughly 8 and up with help; "Try it now" needs no account). Collect examples, train a model, then build a Scratch game that uses it. Try-it-now projects are deleted after a few hours.
- RAISE Playground (MIT, middle school). Scratch-style blocks that classify pictures and text and learn by trial and error.
- AI Quests (Google Research and Stanford, 11 to 14). A game where you gather data, train a model and test it on real science problems, then meet the scientists who did it.
- Hour of AI activities (Code.org, now called CodeAI, with partners; every age). The one-hour activities that replaced the Hour of Code in 2025; each has its own account rules. This year's week is 7 to 11 December 2026, and our Hour of AI at home plan turns them into one hour by age.
- AI Unplugged (primary age, no computer). Card and board games that teach decision trees and the Turing test with nothing but paper. No screen, no data.
- Interland and the Be Internet Awesome AI literacy guide (Google, grades 2 to 8, no login). A web game about being safe online and printable lessons on what AI is.
- PBS LearningMedia: artificial intelligence (every age). Short videos, including Ruff Ruffman's AI shorts for 6 to 10 year olds. It sends you to your local PBS station's copy.
For the youngest readers there's also Peabody's own AI explained for 7-year-olds, a page to read aloud together.
Step-by-step walkthroughs for the most popular ones: Teachable Machine for kids, Machine Learning for Kids, AI for Oceans, level by level, Day of AI for parents and ChatGPT for kids: the rules by age.
Lessons, by age
| Age or grade | Free lessons | What's in them |
|---|---|---|
| Pre-K to grade 2 | Day of AI curriculum (MIT RAISE) | The only real AI units for the youngest we found: "Machines All Around Us", patterns, data, mostly unplugged. Teachers register for the full set |
| Ages 8 to 16 | Experience AI (Raspberry Pi Foundation and Google DeepMind) | Ready-made lessons with slides and worksheets on what AI is, classification and bias; Discovering AI is for 8 to 12 |
| Grades 3 to 12 | aiEDU curriculum | Low-tech, discussion-based activities across subjects; a teacher account is needed to download |
| Grades 6 to 12 | How AI Works (Code.org) | The clearest short videos on machine learning, neural networks, chatbots, image makers and bias, each with a lesson |
| Grades K to 12 | Common Sense AI literacy lessons | Short lessons on bias, chatbots and friendship, deepfakes; strongest on safety and ethics |
| Grades 6 to 12 | Teaching about AI (News Literacy Project) | Spotting AI-made fakes: "AI or not?" and the Two Truths and AI videos |
| Ages 14 and up | BBC Bitesize guide to AI | Teen-voiced articles: can you trust your feed, AI for revision, AI and the environment |
| Grades 3 to 12, makers | AI with MIT App Inventor | Build phone apps with image classifiers; needs sign-in, and some tutorials call outside AI services |
For parents: what AI is, and how to talk about it
- AI literacy toolkit for families (Common Sense and Day of AI). The single best parent link: short videos, conversation cards and a glossary in four languages.
- Khan Academy: AI for education. Three free units on what generative AI is and how to use it for learning. Khanmigo, its paid tutor, is separate.
- Elements of AI (University of Helsinki). A free, no-maths online course for grown-ups on what AI is and how it's made. Needs an account.
- NSPCC: talking to children about AI. Eight practical steps from the UK children's charity, starting with "AI is not a trusted adult".
- FOSI: let's talk about generative AI. Conversation starters for parents and teens. FOSI is funded partly by tech companies.
For parents: safety and privacy
Start with age. Common Sense's age-and-stage guidance says no AI chatbots at 5 and under, because young children can't fully tell AI from real people; limited use beside a grown-up from 6 to 12; and supervised use for homework and creativity from 13, never for comfort or feelings. That is sensible advice for any AI product, Peabody included. Peabody has no open chatbot (its one chat is short and screened, for 3rd grade and up), and its stories are written by AI, so for a child under six, read together.
| What you want to know | Where to look |
|---|---|
| Is this particular chatbot or AI product safe? | Common Sense AI risk assessments |
| What about AI "friends" and companions? | Common Sense guide to AI companions, eSafety Commissioner on chatbots and companions, Children and Screens research at a glance |
| What do paediatricians say? | HealthyChildren.org: how AI chatbots affect kids (American Academy of Pediatrics) |
| Teenagers in particular | APA: four ways to help teens use AI safely |
| What can an app collect about my under-13? | FTC: protecting your child's privacy online (the US law, COPPA, in plain words) |
| How does an app score on privacy? | Common Sense privacy evaluations |
| Privacy with a 4 to 11 year old | ICO: Switched on to Privacy (the UK regulator's three steps) |
| What should a well-built kids' app do by default? | ICO: the Children's Code |
| AI toys | Fairplay's AI toys advisory, which advises not buying them |
| General guides | Internet Matters: using AI, ConnectSafely's parent and teen guide, Digital Wellness Lab family guide (Boston Children's Hospital) |
For people who build or buy for children, the deeper frameworks are UNICEF's guidance on AI and children (version 3, December 2025), UNICEF's 2026 brief when AI becomes a friend, and the 5Rights children and AI design code.
The honest evidence on AI and learning
Most claims about AI in education are ahead of the evidence. These are the places that say so.
- Stanford SCALE: the evidence base on AI in K-12 (March 2026). Of 800-plus papers, about 20 were strong causal studies. Tutors that give hints beat chatbots that give answers, and there were no strong studies yet of students using AI in US K-12 classrooms.
- OECD Digital Education Outlook 2026. Doing a task with AI isn't the same as learning it; gains often vanish once the AI is taken away, unless the tool was built around how people learn.
- Wharton: without guardrails, generative AI can harm education. The Turkey study in plain words: plain ChatGPT raised practice scores and lowered exam scores.
- Hechinger Report on the Khanmigo trial. Jill Barshay's column is the best weekly plain-English coverage of these studies.
- Ethan Mollick: against "brain damage". A balanced walk through the studies: AI hurts learning when it replaces effort and helps when it's set up as a tutor.
- Brookings: a new direction for students in an AI world (January 2026). A wide review that concludes the risks to children currently outweigh the benefits, with recommendations for families.
- Education Next: two-sigma tutoring, fiction and fact. Why the famous "tutoring gives two standard deviations" number is overstated, and what that means for AI tutors.
- National Student Support Accelerator (Stanford). The leading research centre on tutoring, human and AI.
Peabody's own summary of the trials is AI tutors: what the 2024–2026 randomized trials show.
How learning works, explained well
The parts of learning science that matter most for practice (spacing, retrieval, interleaving, mastery) are well explained for free:
| Topic | Best free explainer |
|---|---|
| Six study strategies | The Learning Scientists: posters and bookmarks from cognitive psychologists |
| Retrieval and spacing | RetrievalPractice.org guides by Pooja Agarwal |
| The whole picture in 20 pages | Deans for Impact: The Science of Learning (second edition, 2026) |
| Which study habits work | Dunlosky: strengthening the student toolbox: practice tests and spacing win, highlighting and rereading don't |
| Why harder practice can be better | Bjork and Bjork on desirable difficulties |
| Spaced repetition, as a comic | Nicky Case: how to remember anything forever-ish |
| Teaching at a child's level, not their grade | J-PAL: teaching at the right level |
| Mastery learning, rated | EEF toolkit: mastery learning |
| Myths, gently busted | Daniel Willingham's articles |
| Learning to read | Reading Rockets: Reading 101, Reading Universe, the IES guide to K-3 foundational skills, Shanahan on Literacy |
Peabody's short versions are in the science of learning cheat sheet and the learning science glossary.
For teachers and schools
- AI 101 for teachers (Code.org, ETS, ISTE, Khan Academy). Five self-paced modules of about an hour; fine for parents too.
- TeachAI toolkit. Templates and principles for writing a school's AI policy.
- AI4K12: the five big ideas. The framework most US AI curricula follow. Use it as a reference; the site hasn't changed much since 2024.
- UNESCO's AI competency frameworks for students and teachers. The global reference, dense but free.
- Carl Hendrick's Learning Dispatch. A monthly roundup of new learning-science papers, with a careful eye on AI.
How this list was made, and what was left out
Three research passes on 18 October 2026 looked at about a hundred candidates, opened every link, and kept a site only if it was free to use, current, from a non-profit, a university, a public body or a well-known education group, and honest about what it is. Sites funded by tech companies are marked where it matters.
Left out: Mozilla's Privacy Not Included (closed August 2026), the Student Privacy Pledge (ended 2025), Cognimates (not responding), Google's old AI Experiments page (now redirects elsewhere), the US Office of Educational Technology's 2023 AI report (the office closed in 2025), and vendor pages that read as marketing. CS Unplugged is excellent but none of its topics is about AI, so AI Unplugged is listed instead.
Links break. If one here does, the blog and this page are updated as we find out.
Questions parents ask
What's the best free site to teach my child about AI?
For a child of 8 or more, Teachable Machine: in one minute they teach the computer something and watch it guess. For a 6 or 7 year old, Quick, Draw! or the Ruff Ruffman videos on PBS LearningMedia. For under-sixes, Day of AI's unplugged Pre-K to 2 units, done with a grown-up.
Do any of these need my child to make an account?
Teachable Machine, Quick, Draw!, AI Unplugged, Interland and the family toolkit need no account. Code.org's AI for Oceans works without signing in. Elements of AI, App Inventor (to build) and aiEDU (to download) need accounts, and Machine Learning for Kids' class accounts are made by a teacher.
Is Common Sense Media saying young children shouldn't use AI at all?
Its advice is about chatbots: none at 5 and under, limited use beside a grown-up from 6 to 12. A tool where an adult chooses the content and sits alongside is a different thing from an open chat, but the reason behind the advice, that young children can't fully tell AI from people, is worth keeping in mind with any AI product.
Where can I read whether AI tutors actually work?
Stanford SCALE's 2026 review and the OECD's 2026 Digital Education Outlook are the two best overviews. Both say tools built around hints and practice look better than open chatbots, and that the strong evidence is still thin.
Is Peabody on this list?
No. Peabody is a free reading and learning site for kids, free through the end of 2026, with stories in the library to read without an account. This page is here because the sites on it teach things Peabody doesn't.
Checked against how Peabody works on 18 October 2026. Written with help from AI. Peabody is a reading app, not a reading assessment: if you're worried about your child's reading, talk to their teacher.