Kids Thinking Club — AI Literacy for Ages 6 to 10

The Gap

Zero K-12 standards for AI literacy. And not for lack of need.

National or state K-12 standards for AI literacy

81%

of CS teachers say AI belongs in foundational learning

of students enrolled in CS where it is even offered

There are no K-12 standards for AI literacy in the United States. Not at the national level, not at the state level. Zero. And it is not because people don't see the need.

81 percent of computer science teachers say AI should be part of foundational learning. But fewer than half feel equipped to teach it.

And consider this. After nearly three decades of the internet age, 40 percent of US high schools still don't offer any computer science course at all. Among those that do, only about 6 percent of students enroll. That is computer science broadly, not AI specifically. But it tells you the problem is not one gap. It is three: a gap in policy, a gap in curriculum, and a gap in teacher readiness.

A child starting kindergarten today could be in college before any of this formally reaches her classroom. I find that timeline hard to accept. Not because schools aren't trying, but because the technology is not waiting. Our kids interact with AI every day. They deserve to understand what it is and how to think critically about it, even if the institutions around them have not caught up yet.

Sources: Stanford HAI 2025 AI Index Report; CSTA.

A Different Starting Point

Understanding AI both protects your child and turns them into a creator, not just a consumer.

Almost everything written for parents about AI runs on fear. One version warns you that AI is bad for your kid: more screen time, easier cheating, cognitive function softening, attention destroyed. The other version warns you that your child is falling behind: every other kid is already using these tools, the gap widens every month. Both leave you worried. Neither tells you what to actually do.

This curriculum is a different starting point. It teaches your child the foundations of artificial intelligence: the neural network research that made it possible, and the mechanics underneath the language models and image generators they already use. The path goes through analogies your child already understands. They start by thinking about animal and human intelligence, and from there arrive at the same big questions adults working in AI are still wrestling with. By the end of ten units, your child knows what AI actually is, how the tools are built, and what to question about them. So do you.

You do not need to be an expert. The curriculum assumes you are learning alongside your child, which is exactly what they need to see. A parent picking up something hard from scratch, without pretending to already know it, is one of the most useful things a kid can witness.

Why I Built This

I noticed my daughter's repeated resistance to books about technology, especially robots going rogue and not listening to the humans who made them, or computers winning at games and being smarter than humans. I knew she was getting signals from her peers.

I have never believed you can reassure a child out of a fear like that. You replace it with understanding, or it stays. So I set out to help her actually understand how AI works.

When I started looking for the tools to teach her, I couldn't find them. Most content out there is fear based, trying to scare parents about AI safety, or an agent of sorts that helps kids more safely use LLMs, mostly as advanced search. I could not find anything to actually help kids understand the foundations of AI and give them the agency to use these tools to create.

So I built the curriculum myself over the last 15 months.

Just last week, my daughter was boasting to a friend of mine about the language model she has been building, and how she is trying to teach it tricky words like "teenager" and "family."

What changed was not only how much she understood, though that is considerable. It was what the understanding did to her confidence. Not only is she no longer afraid of the concept, but she is proud of what she is building with real tools. That confidence is what I want your children to experience too.

A model being trained with image categories and a live prediction

The model my daughter has been training, built with real tools.

Join the founding cohort $79

The Three Things

Why we called it the Kids Thinking Club.

We did not call it the AI Club. That was deliberate. The point is not the technology. The point is teaching kids how to think, with AI as the subject worth thinking about.

A curriculum

Ten units for ages 6 to 10. Each one opens with a real question, moves through hands-on activities you can run with what is already in your kitchen, and ends somewhere your child did not expect.

A way of learning together

You are not lecturing. You are investigating alongside your child, asking questions you do not know the answers to, and modeling what it looks like to learn something hard on purpose. What your child builds is genuine understanding and the habit of critical thinking: how to question what a machine tells them, how to separate what it is actually good at from what it only looks good at. That is why this is the Thinking Club and not the AI club, by design. And the not knowing, on your part, is a feature.

A kind of space kids rarely get

We started this as an actual club. Kids and parents around a table, arguing about whether grass is intelligent, building neural networks out of cups and string. Children almost never get that kind of intellectual agency in a normal school day, and it lights them up.

Use it however fits your life. On your own with your child, it works. With one other family, it gets richer. Gather a few kids into a club, and it becomes the thing they ask about all week. You do not have to start a club. But it is worth asking why these spaces are so rare, and what happens to a kid who finally gets one.

You do not have to do a unit in one sitting. Each one is about ninety minutes of activity in total, which you can run in an afternoon or weave across a week. There are extensions if your child wants to go further, and optional resources you can dive into.

The Curriculum

Ten units. Four phases. One connected story.

The curriculum moves on purpose from fully analog to real tools, the same way understanding actually builds.

How AI works

Big ideas through provocations and hands-on activities, completely off screen. What intelligence is. How a computer sees. How it finds patterns.

What AI does with what it learns

Kids become the trainers. They feed examples to a model and watch what it learns, and what it gets wrong.

Creating with AI

Words, images, and sound. Guided, hands-on co-creation with real tools.

Where AI is going

A capstone on the frontier and the questions that matter, the ones without clean answers yet.

A child testing her senses while blindfolded

How we sense. Exploring how humans take in the world.

How a computer sees. Coloring pixel grids by number.

Finding patterns. Sorting objects into categories.

An assignment to teach a model to recognize colors

Training a model. Teaching a computer to see color.

Join the founding cohort $79

Ahead of the Standards

No standards exist yet. So this is built on the best thinking in the field, and goes further.

There are no state or national K-12 standards for AI literacy. This curriculum is informed by the big ideas emerging in the field, including the AI4K12 Initiative. Kids Thinking Club goes much further. It fleshes those ideas out, and combines them with analog activities and the latest tools for co-creation.

If you are a working parent who wants a rigorous, well researched foundational course, this is it. If you are a homeschooling parent, you will find a clear scope and sequence in the curriculum, along with learning objectives.

Join the founding cohort $79

About Ivi

Ivi, founder of Kids Thinking Club, hiking with her child

I am a mom in the Bay Area, California. I have a daughter finishing second grade and two stepdaughters in high school and college. I am deeply involved in education, both with my own children and in the wider work of improving our schools and learning outcomes at scale.

During the Covid lockdowns, I started a microschool and led its curriculum development. I have toured many of the leading private schools in our area to understand where teaching is heading and what the best of it looks like. I also attend innovative educator workshops across these campuses. I advise our public school district, including the superintendent, on budget decisions. And I am part of our local math circle community, which prepares children for advanced math.

Professionally, I have scaled technology solutions and held leadership roles at startups and corporations. I use AI fluently, not only as a consumer but as someone who builds products and tools with it. I have an MBA from Northwestern University and a BA from the University of Virginia.

This curriculum sits at the intersection of what I am passionate about and what I love to build. I understand the technology from the inside, and I care about getting the learning right for a child's developmental age.

Thank you for finding me and this important work. I love connecting and staying in touch with like-minded parents. Email me at kidsthinkingclub@gmail.com or follow along @kidsthinkingclub on Instagram.

How It Works

What it actually takes to run it.

You do not need to block out a big chunk of time. Preview the unit and the parent guide first, so you know where it is headed. Then bring the ideas in when the moment is right. Some families do a whole unit in one afternoon. Others spread it across a week, a conversation here, an activity there. Both work.

No screens are required for the core of the early units. The digital tools that come later are free, and the curriculum walks you through them from beginner to more advanced. The videos and visual materials are free and linked. The only things you need from the outside world are a few picture books, and those are at most libraries. Each unit tells you which books it uses and why, so you can request them ahead of time or swap in something similar you already own.

Who It's For

Who this is for.

Parents who are not afraid of AI and do not want their kids to be. Who would rather their child understand this technology than just operate it. Who do not have a hundred hours to build a curriculum from scratch, and should not have to.

It is also built for homeschooling families who want to bring AI literacy into their lessons with real structure, without having to become the expert first.

It is not for parents trying to keep AI out of their children's lives entirely. That is a different goal, and this is not the tool for it.

The Offer

Join the founding cohort.

$79

Founding price
~~$149~~ standard

You're coming in before the broader public sees this content. Your feedback is invaluable. Please try it at the heavily discounted price and share your feedback.

Beyond the discount, founding members get:

Email access to me for support, plus a live parent webinar on running the curriculum at home
Free updates as I keep improving this version
Early access to the next content I release

Join the founding cohort $79

Questions

Questions, answered.

Do I need to know anything about AI to teach this? +

No. The curriculum is built for you to learn alongside your child. You ask the questions, you do the activities together, and you work it out as you go. That is the point, not a workaround.

Do I need to buy additional materials? +

Almost nothing. The digital tools are free, and the curriculum guides you through them from beginner to advanced. The videos and visual resources are free and linked. The only outside materials are a few picture books, available at most libraries. Each unit explains which books it uses and how they connect to the concept, so you can request them ahead of time or substitute books you already have.

Is this screen based? +

The opposite. The early units are fully analog, done with paper, objects, and conversation. Screens come in later and only with intention, when kids use real tools to create. Even then it is guided and hands-on, not a child alone with an app.

My kids are different ages. Will it work for both? +

Yes. The core of each unit works across ages 6 to 10. The extensions let an older or more curious child go deeper on the same concept, so siblings can do the same unit at their own level.

Do I have to start a club? +

No. Everything works for one parent and one child at the kitchen table. The club is simply how we started, and it is there if you ever want to bring other families in.

Your kids are growing up with AI. Make sure they understand it, not just use it.

Zero K-12 standards for AI literacy. And not for lack of need.

Understanding AI both protects your child and turns them into a creator, not just a consumer.