› For families at home
The AI head start, minus the price tag.
Your kid is already using AI — for homework, videos, games. The head start isn’t more screen time. It’s knowing how the machine works, when it’s wrong, and when to say no. That fits at the kitchen table, and it’s free.
What you need: A printer (a library printer works), scissors, and 30 minutes. You don’t need to understand AI first.
- No tutor
- No subscription
- No tech background
- No new apps for your kid
› The plan
Four steps, all free.
01 · Tonight
Print a card game
Bot-Builders is a no-email download. Play one round and you’ve taught the sense → think → act loop behind every robot.
Print Bot-Builders →02 · This week
Do one printable together
Pick a free activity from the library. Each one starts with a plain-language page for the grown-up.
Browse free printables →03 · This month
Learn the words together
Use the AI concepts field guide at dinner: one word a night — model, training, hallucination, bias.
Open the field guide →04 · When you’re ready
Get one step ahead
Take First Principles yourself — a free lesson a day by email — while your kid tries the self-paced AI Foundations course.
Start First Principles →
› What “AI-ready” means
Four skills every kid will need.
Having an AI app isn't the gap — nearly every family has a phone. The gap is knowing how these systems work and how to work with them. Every free resource here builds one of these four skills.
- Understand
- AI predicts from patterns in examples. It doesn’t know things the way people do — and that explains most of what it gets wrong.
- Direct
- Break a job into steps, ask clearly, and give the machine the right examples. Directing well is the new version of doing it yourself.
- Verify
- Fluent isn’t the same as true. Check claims, follow citations to the source, and notice when a confident answer is wrong.
- Decide
- When to use it, when not to, what data you’re handing over, and who gets hurt when a system is unfair. That call stays human.
The thinking isn’t the expensive part.
Tutors, coding academies, and prep programs sell AI readiness by the hour or the semester. The thinking underneath — how a model predicts, why it sounds sure when it’s wrong, how to check it, when to say no — fits on a sheet of paper. So we put it on paper and made it free.
Free stays free. The paid Activities Pass and the Richmond clubhouse keep the lights on. Printed class sets for schools that can’t run a copier are covered by sponsors — either one the school already knows, or one we help find.
Questions people ask
I’m not technical. Can I really teach this?
Yes. Every printable starts with a plain-language page for the grown-up, and the card games teach through play. You learn it together.
We don’t have a printer.
Most public libraries print for free or a few cents a page, and the card games print on plain letter paper. One trip covers weeks of activities.
Is this a replacement for a tutor?
It covers the AI-readiness part — how these systems work and how to use them wisely — which most tutoring doesn’t touch. It won’t drill your kid for a test.
Is it really free?
Yes. Some downloads ask for a grown-up’s email so we can send the file. Nothing asks for a card, and no child needs an account.
› Pass it on
Know a school, co-op, or family who needs this?
Send them the link, or print the one-pager for a front office, library desk, or PTA table.
hibot.space/access/families