Learning to Lead: Fourth and Second Graders Explore AI Responsibly

Fourth graders brought their signature curiosity and energy to The Hour of AI—a global initiative from CSforALL and Code.org that aims to make AI literacy accessible, inclusive, and fun for learners of all ages. The Hour of AI offers more than 100 free, beginner-friendly activities—such as remixing music, training robots, or creating interactive games—so that students can explore what artificial intelligence really is, how it works, and how it can be used creatively.

“The focus of our Lower School technology program is to nurture creative communicators and innovative designers  who use technology to amplify their ideas, not automate them,” says Lower School Technology, Innovation, and Design Integrator Jen Garvey.  “We’re teaching students that AI is a tool to help visualize our concepts—like generating images from our prompts—but that our own ideas and our own writing must always be the foundation of our work. We are learning to use the power responsibly, ensuring that we remain the architects of our own ideas. The Hour of AI was a fun way to explore the possibilities that AI offers, while also focusing on its ethical and creative use.”

Second graders also participated in The Hour of AI, completing AI for Oceans, an age-appropriate exploration of how AI—specifically machine learning—can address problems such as ocean pollution. The activity uses a video game-style interface where students train a simple AI to help clean up the ocean by identifying objects such as fish versus trash. As they play, they learn key concepts in how machine learning works—especially the influences of training data and human examples.

By the end, Peck students weren’t just using AI—they had taken their first steps toward becoming thoughtful, responsible creators in a digital world.