Alphoria AIYou can teach the core ideas behind AI without a single device. These five low-prep activities make abstract concepts physical — perfect for a rainy afternoon.
1. The sorting game (classification)
Gather buttons or Lego of different colours. Ask your child to invent a rule to sort them, then sort a new pile by that rule. That's classification — the same job behind spam filters and photo tagging.
2. Twenty questions (decision trees)
Play the classic game. Afterwards, point out that each question split the possibilities in half. Drawing the questions as branches shows exactly how a "decision tree" narrows down an answer.
3. Pattern prediction (training data)
Write a simple sequence — red, blue, red, blue — and ask what comes next. Then make it trickier. The more examples you give, the better the guess. That's the role of training data in a sentence.
4. The biased basket (fairness)
Fill a bag mostly with red counters and a few blue. Have your child draw a few and predict the bag's contents. They'll over-guess red. That's how unbalanced data leads an AI to skewed conclusions — a gentle first taste of bias.
5. Robot instructions (algorithms)
Have your child write step-by-step instructions to make a jam sandwich, then follow them literally. The hilarious failures teach why machines need precise, unambiguous steps.
Each game plants a real concept your child will recognise later when they meet the technology itself.