Kids Game Arcade Classroom Pack · AI thinking · Ages 3 to 5 (Pre-K and K)
Is it a person or a machine?
Goal
Children can say that machines follow instructions and learn from examples, and that they are not alive.
Vocabulary
- machine
- instructions
- example
- guess
Materials
- Pictures of everyday things: a dog, a toaster, a robot toy, a baby, a talking speaker, a tree
- Two hoops or mats labelled "alive" and "machine"
Warm-up (5 minutes)
Hold up the robot toy. Ask: "Is it alive? How do you know?" Accept every answer.
Activity
- Sort the pictures into "alive" and "machine" together. Talk about tricky ones like the talking speaker.
- Say: "Some machines learned by looking at lots of examples, like you learned what a dog looks like by seeing lots of dogs."
- Play "Guess my animal": describe an animal with three clues, children guess. Then say: "You guessed from clues. Some computers guess like that too, and sometimes they guess wrong."
- Make a mistake on purpose: describe a cat and say "dog". Ask the children to catch you.
Talk about it
- Can a machine feel happy or sad?
- Who tells a machine what to do?
- What should we do if a machine gets something wrong?
Check for understanding
Each child places one new picture in the right hoop and says why.
No devices?
The whole lesson is unplugged.
Going further
With a grown-up typing, describe a made-up animal and look at what a drawing tool makes. Is it what we imagined?
Safety: students never type names, schools or other personal details into any tool. kidsgamearcade.com/schools · © 2026 SOEngineered LLC. Free to print and share for teaching; not for resale.