If you missed that one, it is here: Why This School Year Is Different

This is week two of four in the Back-to-School AI Readiness series, running every Sunday this month.

What I left out is what happened next.

We both laughed, and then we talked about how that is not the best use of AI. She understood and clearly said "Yeah mum, I fully agree with you." For a second that surprised me, but then I realized that like most kids, my daughter already knew that keeping her own thinking intact was the thing worth protecting. She wanted to feel the achievement of doing the work herself and truth is underneath the eye rolls and the shortcuts, most kids want the same too.

Your version of that moment probably looks different than mine, maybe it was a homework answer that came back a little too polished, or a school laptop that came home with a login sheet. That said, maybe that moment has not come up yet, and all you have is the knowledge that September is coming and you have not worked out how to bring AI up with your kid. Either way, that is the conversation this post is about.

This conversation is not about lecturing them or sounding like you have all the answers. Instead, it is about sitting down beside them, looking at these tools together, and being the first person who talks to them about how to use these tools well, before somebody else sets the terms.

So this week is the part I promised, let's dive into how, in one sitting about as long as a bedtime story, I talk to my kids about AI before the school year starts.

By the end of this post, you'll know:

• What to say to your kid when they ask you something about AI you cannot answer

• What the four letters of LEAD are, and how to run them in one sitting

• How to catch AI being wrong together, and why that is the part that sticks

• What three questions you can carry into the school year with your kids

• What one sentence to write down together and put on your fridge

• How AI Family Network will support you through the rest of this back-to-school series

You Do Not Need to Understand AI, You Just Need to Be Willing to Find Out

Last week I mentioned that UNICRI (the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute) research told us that about 49% of parents have not talked to their kids about generative AI. That same research also found that 38% of parents have never used generative AI themselves, and 44% do not feel they know enough to guide their kids responsibly.

The number I keep coming back to is that 38%, because if you have never used one of these tools, or only a handful of times, then how are you supposed to bring it up with your kids?

I fully understand your concern as I am a parent sitting in the same spot you are today. My kids come to me with questions about AI, and I know they are going to run into it at school whether they ask me or not, and for a long time I assumed I needed to understand it well before I answered their questions or spoke to them about it. I have also been on the other side of the table in this situation too. As a kid in the 90s when the internet arrived, I watched my parents try to answer my questions about something they had no idea how to use.

From both situations, here is what I learned: instead of brushing it off or waiting, try accepting the unknown. For example, my parents could not teach me about the internet, so they taught me good judgment and decision making. They sat with me while I explored the web, and they let me teach them how it worked. So when my kids wanted to use AI to come up with STEM activities for spring break last year, I jumped in with them and we did the whole thing as a family project. That turned into two posts, How We Used AI to Plan Spring Break STEM Activities for Kids and We Used AI to Plan Spring Break, Here's What Actually Happened, and none of it started with me knowing what I was doing.

So when your kid asks you something about AI that you cannot answer, and trust me they will, try saying, "I don't know, let's find out," and then go and find out sitting right next to them. For a kid, watching a parent be curious and careful about something new is the actual lesson, because they are not learning AI in that moment, they are learning what you do when you do not know something and how you use AI to help but not overtake your thinking.

LEAD, and What It Looks Like at a Kitchen Table

As a parent, I understand how hard it is to talk about AI with your kids. We're not experts and nobody has written the rules on how to teach our kids about AI. This isn't something that's been done for hundreds of years. Instead, we are navigating new waters here, as the world embraces AI as a part of our lives.

I came up with the LEAD mindset because I had to guide my 8 and 12 year old kids through AI, and because friends kept asking me for help. They wanted something to hold onto, not a step-by-step plan, more of a mindset shift.

LEAD isn't a step-by-step checklist or a rule book. Instead, it is a mindset shift to leverage as AI becomes more mainstream in our lives and we as parents need to guide our kids on this journey.

L, Lead the Conversation

The whole letter is this: be the parent who brings AI up, so it becomes something your family talks about openly instead of something your kid does quietly on a school laptop or alone in their bedroom.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with both my kids and showed them the AI tools I actually use for work, open side by side on the same screen. The point was not the tools, it was showing them that they are all similar and none of them are magical. From school and friends, both of them had already heard of ChatGPT, so I showed them two more: Gemini, which is Google's version of ChatGPT, and Claude, which is the one I use most for work.

The goal of this conversation was not that they fully understand how to use the tools, or that I teach them the ins and outs. The goal was for these AI tools to be introduced to them by me, at our table, rather than through a friend or a random YouTube video.

Like my kids, yours might ask how these tools actually work. To help with that, I broke down what AI is and what AI is not in Are You Aware of Your Kid's Friends You Can't See?.

E, Engage Together

L gets the conversation started, but you do not want to be in the driver's seat forever. E is about shifting from teacher to curious partner, and as your kids get older (like my 12 year old) it means handing them the wheel while you stay in the passenger seat.

The best example of this exact switch happened in my house this summer.

Back in March, when my kids wanted to use AI to plan STEM activities for spring break, I was the one who opened the laptop and led the process with them sitting beside me. Then, when summer break started, my 12 year old wanted to do the same thing for the summer holidays, except this time I did not open anything.

I told her that was an awesome idea and that she could totally try it. Her instinct was to go straight to Gemini and start typing, which is what most of us would do.

Instead, I paused and asked one question: what are you actually asking for, and what kind of activities do you want? That question got exactly the reaction I wanted, the pause that says let me think about this for a moment. This led to a short discussion where we determined her exact goals, which were STEM activities and art activities for her and her brother, along with the idea of using our March activity planning prompt as a starting point.

She then took the lead to update the prompt, run it, and validate the AI output, while I sat beside her in the passenger seat.

The whole goal of E is to engage with them and hand down some lessons, for me it was to ensure she learns to pause and plan before she prompts. I was teaching her that you do not reach for AI to start solving a problem, you reach for it once you have done some of the thinking yourself, because that muscle is what makes AI useful to you instead of the other way around.

A, Always Verify

If you have used one of these tools even once, you know AI is amazing at handing you confident answers, just like our kids are confident when they say "I can't find my shoes" when they are right there near the door. (You feel me, right? 😊)

So one line I repeat to my kids all the time about AI is "AI is confident, but not always correct." The goal of A is to teach our kids to look beyond the confident answer and instead always verify the response.

For example, in the same summer session with my daughter, when Gemini listed the activities, I did not step in to review them. I let her do it. Then I asked her: were the activities useful? Do you think they are the right level for you two? She felt it did a good job, and we discussed the response a bit.

Then the real verification started. As they did each activity, they would notice that the recipe skipped an ingredient or that a measurement was wrong. They would laugh about how AI got it wrong, and without anyone teaching them, they learned both that AI can be wrong and how to experiment until the recipe worked.

D, Don't Share What's Private

This letter is the most important one to me. Whatever we give these tools ends up somewhere, tied to us, and our kids need to know that as unlike us, they are using AI through some of their most vulnerable years.

Thinking back to my childhood, my parents didn't understand how the internet worked. That said, they knew I could talk to strangers through chat rooms, so instead of lecturing me, one of them sat with me and asked to see a chat room and how it worked. Then they gently asked, "would you walk up to a stranger and tell them your address or your secrets?" I said no, that is silly. And they said, treat the internet the same way. It is a stranger, don't tell it what you don't want made public.

I look at AI the exact same way. It is a stranger, and whatever we tell it can be made public without our knowledge. So the one line I use with my kids is..."We don't tell AI anything we wouldn't tell a stranger."

Not our secrets, not our photos, not our friends' names. Whatever you tell AI, assume it could be read by someone else or made public without you knowing. It's the AI version of the stranger-danger talk we all got, and if you want the deeper version of why, I wrote about what happens to the things our kids share with AI in What Your Child Shares with AI Never Really Goes Away.

We wrote that line on a note and put it on the fridge, together. One sentence, not a list of rules, because long lists evaporate by Tuesday.

Your kid will test the sentence. They'll ask why, and then they'll ask about the edge cases. Good, that's the conversation working.

*I first wrote about the LEAD mindset back in March, in a much longer piece with more examples for each letter. If you want that version, it is here.*

Three Questions I Am Carrying Into the School Year

The kitchen table talk is a good starting point. It helps us make sure our kids are introduced to AI by us, rather than by a random kid at recess or alone on a school laptop, and it gives us parents a chance to influence that first experience and guide them on this new journey. That said, the talk is only one part. The next part is carrying it through the school year, so the conversation does not stop the moment they actually start meeting AI at school.

Now my kids, I am sure yours are the same, are not going to enjoy a monthly formal AI sit down, right? So how do you keep talking about AI with your kids, stay curious, and informed?

I thought a lot about this over the last few weeks, and I am going to carry three questions into this school year. After doing some research, these are the ones I think will help me stay curious alongside my kids while the year happens and I am sharing them here so you can use them too.

Question #1 - "Show me what the school gave you." Throughout the first few weeks of school, I am certain a Chromebook or a login sheet is coming home. My goal is to not have that first sign-in happen while my kid is alone in their bedroom, instead we do it together as a curious, learning-together activity. We might even test what AI tools they can access once they log in, and I will run some of the checks I am sharing on Aug 16 to make sure their account is set up properly.

Question #2 - "What do your friends use AI for?" Last year my kids were always telling me about a classmate or friend using AI for something, but then sometimes I wouldn't hear anything for a few days, so I would just ask this question randomly in the evening. It always sparked a discussion about how someone was using AI at school, and it opens the door sideways and tells me where my kid actually is with AI rather than where I assume they are.

Question #3 - "Did anyone show you something cool you can do with AI?" Every so often last year, my kids would come home and share something neat they saw someone do with AI. As we approach this school year, I want that to continue, so this question is to open that door. I am phrasing it as an invitation to show off, and kids collect cool things all day and are dying to show somebody. I want to be the somebody they show those cool things to, because I truly enjoy it and I want to see what they know.

The Talk Is Half the Job

As a parent, I do believe the talk is important as it is what stays with our kid when we are not in the room to help. That said, there is a second half, and that is ours to manage too.

That second half is setting up your accounts and theirs properly and in a secure way, so you are not stuck with whatever the default settings happen to be, and not quietly sending your data off to help improve someone's AI model.

I spent lots of time this summer digging into all the settings I as a parent need to be aware of and check regularly. So next Sunday, week three of this Back-to-School series, I will outline the exact Back-to-School AI Readiness Check, which you can run in 20 to 30 minutes. My goal with it is to give you all the steps so you can set up your family's accounts and have the peace of mind that they are done properly and securely, without losing and entire weekend.

I spent a number of weekends working on the Back-to-School AI Readiness Check and I am going to include screenshots and videos to make it super quick, which is why that post will be partly paid.

Wrapping Up

Thank you so much for reading, and I really do mean that. As a fellow parent I know how full these last few weeks before school can be, so the fact that you gave this your time means a lot to me.

What stayed with me from our 20 minutes is how little convincing my kid needed, it was instead that my 12 year old already knew that letting AI do the thinking for her was not the point, and saying it out loud together took about a minute. Your kid may well be in the same place, and you will not find that out until you sit down and ask.

So if you do one thing with this post, have the 20 minute chat before the first day. You bring it up, they drive, you catch AI being wrong together, and you write one sentence down and stick it where everyone will see it. It does not need to go perfectly and you do not need to know a single thing more than you know right now. Then next Sunday I will be back with the Back-to-School AI Readiness Check, so that you can get the peace of mind that your accounts are setup in a secure and proper way.

And if you have a minute, drop a comment and let me know, which of the four letters feels hardest in your house? There is no wrong answer here, and no wrong starting point either. Two weeks ago I had not had this conversation with my own kids yet, so wherever you are with it is exactly where I was, and truth is we all learn from each other on this stuff.

- Manisha 💛

Thanks for reading AI Family Network Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

About the Author

Hey, I'm Manisha. I'm a parent, a lifelong learner, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how AI and tech shows up in our homes. I work with AI and automation professionally, but at home I'm navigating the same questions you probably are:

• When is it okay for my kid to use AI for schoolwork, and when is it not?

• What should they never type into one of these tools?

• Which of these tools are actually safe enough for our family?

AI Family Network is where I share what I'm learning as I explore AI and tech with my own family. I'm not here as an expert with all the answers. I'm here as a parent figuring it out in real time, just like you.

A Quick Note

Everything I share here comes from my personal experience using AI with my family. It's meant to inform and educate, not to replace professional, medical, legal, or educational advice. What works in my home may not be right for yours. AI tools change fast. School policies vary. Every family is different. So please, review tools yourself. Trust your instincts. And loop in the other trusted adults and educators in your life when you're making decisions. You know your family best.

It's the first week of August, and just like your family, summer is in full swing in my house. The kids have run around the backyard, had water fights, played tag and bedtime is way LATER than expected. That said, back-to-school flyers have started showing up, and regardless of what we do school is coming in a few weeks.

This year feels different as in September 2025 AI still felt new to most of us. A lot of us were using it as a chatbot and it was not really part of our day to day. Over the course of 2026 that changed, not because we all started using it more, but because it quietly started showing up inside the tools we and our kids already use. Whether you use AI every day or have barely touched it, it is getting harder to avoid. Then in June, while we were busy getting ready for summer, Google announced it is bringing Gemini, which is Google's version of ChatGPT, into Google Classroom for students of all ages.

In our house we have already had the AI talk and we use these tools together, but this school year my kids will be using these tools without me sitting beside them, helping point out what it got wrong, or noticing what they were about to type into it. My friends are in the same spot, some with kids as young as four and six, and truth is most of us find it hard to get the time or even know where to start, which is exactly what I wrote about back in March in 49% of Parents Haven't Talked to Their Kids About AI, The LEAD Framework Fixes That. So I sat down with my 12 year old, opened her school account, and we went looking at what she actually had access to. What we found in five minutes is why this post exists.

By the end of this post, you'll know:

• How AI can show up for our kids of all ages (K-12) this school year

• What potentially can be blocked in school accounts

• What and how kids can get around the blockage

• Who can control access to these AI tools on school accounts

• What first steps you can take as the parent

• How AI Family Network will support you as you prepare for this upcoming school year

What Changed Since Last September

Think back to last September, if you were like me, we were just trying to figure out what role AI was going to play in our lives, let alone our kids' lives. Through the school year, every so often we used AI for either ourselves or our kid, but we assumed they weren't using it through their school devices.

That June announcement was specific in a way I was not expecting. It did not say "Google is bringing Gemini to high school accounts or teacher accounts only", it clearly said all ages, and all ages means K-12. It went out on June 25, right at the end of the school year, while the rest of us were sorting out camps and summer holidays.

Which means that depending on your school setup, if the feature is turned on, your kid can sign in with their school account and start chatting with AI, much the same way you would with ChatGPT.

Now here is the part that got me. That decision is not mine, and it is not yours either. It belongs to whoever manages the Google accounts your school hands out, usually someone at the school board/district you have never met. Google does start it switched off for K-12, which is good, but any one of those administrators can switch it on. What that means for us is that your kid could have AI on their school login this September because of a decision made in an office you will never visit, and nobody has to send a note home about it.

So it was up to me to check if it was on, and to do some testing with my daughter.

Her School Blocked AI. It Took Her Five Minutes to Get Around It.

Like many of you, I have a curious 12 year old, and after I told her about the June update she was more than happy to help me test what her school account could actually do.

First we tried accessing Claude and ChatGPT, the good news was her school has switched off "Sign in with Google," so she could not use her school account as a one click login. So it sort of looked like a block, but then we decided to try the "sign in with email" option and we got through the blockage and could create an account for her using her school email. Additionally, ChatGPT allowed her to start chatting right on their homepage without any email or account, so that wasn't reassuring at all.

Then we tried accessing Gemini and this is where things got interesting. Gemini was fully blocked. The page loaded and then told us she wasn't allowed in. I am guessing this is because the school board, which manages her Google Account, has not turned on Gemini for her yet.

But my curious 12 year old didn't stop there, she decided to open google.com and switch over to AI Mode, which is the AI answer box now built into Google Search. (Just a side note, I am personally not a fan of AI Mode). First, she started small and asked it how to say hello in Spanish and it worked great. Then we got a bit more creative, and noticed the little "+" symbol at the bottom where we could upload a file to AI Mode.

We decided to give it a subtraction homework sheet from last year and ask AI Mode to give us the answers, and it did it.

So there was no account, no ban, no permission check and no blockage to stop her from using AI Mode straight on google.com to do her math homework. We paused to have a good chat about how you should not do that! :)

If you remember one thing from all of that, make it this. Her school really did try to block AI, and she was still doing homework with it on a school laptop, on a school account, in under five minutes. And if your kid has a school Chromebook or a school login sitting in a drawer waiting for September, it can very likely do the same thing.

So I went looking for a switch. Something a parent or a school could use to just turn this off.

What I found was not encouraging. On July 14, Common Sense Media, the nonprofit that rates apps and movies for families, published an independent assessment of exactly this and rated it Unacceptable Risk. Their words:

"no one can turn the AI features off, not a parent, not a school administrator, not the user"

They ran 180 school assignments through it, and every single time it produced a complete answer a kid could hand in.

School IT staff are asking for that switch too. On Google's own forums (https://discuss.google.dev/t/feature-request-admin-controls-for-search-labs-features-such-as-ai-mode/285791), an administrator who manages Google accounts for a school posted the exact request I was hoping to find answered: "We need controls as admins for all Search Labs features, especially AI Mode for Google Search." As far as I can tell, that control still does not exist. A district can pay for extra filtering software to work around it, but most have not. What that means at home is that there is no setting you can flip, and no setting your kid's school can flip either.

The one bit of good news I found was on Google's own Search help page (https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/17024959), where they say plainly: "If you got your Google Account through your educational institution, Google does not use your Search Services History data to train generative AI models."

What that means at home is that when my daughter is signed into her school account, what she types is not being used to train Google's AI. However, if she signs into her own Gmail on that exact same laptop, it is. Same kid, same computer, different rules depending on which account she is signed into. That's really the same thing I wrote about in What Your Child Shares with AI Never Really Goes Away.

We Can't Ban Our Way Out of This One

So if you are like me, you now have this quiet feeling that you cannot actually stop your kid from getting to AI this year. Either through their school account, through a friend's computer or some other way, they will meet some form of AI.

Take my daughter's school account, even though the school tried to block AI she found a way around it in about five minutes, and truth is most of our kids will find a way around bans. Remember, we as adults today found ways around our own restrictions back in the 80s and 90s, right?

So knowing that my kids can and will get around the bans, I went looking at how many kids are already using this stuff. One study did not ask kids what they used, it looked at what was actually running on their devices, across 6,488 US kids aged 4 to 17. Roughly one in three were already using AI apps on their own. Here is how it broke down by age:

• 8 to 9: about 9%

• 10 to 12: about 20%

• 13 to 14: about 42%

• 15 to 17: just over 50%

Source: Maheux, Akre-Bhide, Boeldt et al., Generative artificial intelligence applications use among US youth, JAMA Network Open 2026, https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2025.56631

Look at that 8 to 9 year old band, almost one in ten, and then it climbs fast, roughly doubling by 10 to 12 and doubling again by 13. So the years before that jump, the years when they still want to sit at the kitchen table and show us what they found, are the years we actually get to teach them. That is the window, and for a lot of us it is open right now.

So we need to stop telling ourselves that the AI chat can wait, or that it is a teenager problem and we can deal with it later. The numbers say it starts well before the teenage years, so the time is now.

And if reading that makes you feel behind, I want to say clearly that you are not. You do not need to follow AI news to be caught up in any of this. Talking to my friends this summer, every single one of us feels behind on it. It is all moving so quickly and we are trying to keep up on top of everything else parenting already asks of us.

So What's Actually Left

Earlier I mentioned that 49% of parents have not talked to their kids about AI and the truth is this is not because we don't want to. Trust me, I want to and am trying to. That said, many of us hope it can wait until our kids are older, or until we know more and feel qualified enough to have it. I spent this summer learning that the waiting is the trap, because that day is not coming for any of us and the school year is not going to wait for it.

So if we cannot block it, and we cannot wait until we understand it, what is actually left is the part that we parents can own.

The conversation we can have with our own kids.

A conversation about what these tools are, what they get wrong, and what we do and do not tell them. That conversation is designed to travel with our kids into every room we are not in and every hot NEW AI tool that gets invented.

So to help us all get started, the month of August at AI Family Network is dedicated to Back-to-School AI Readiness. Over the next four Sundays, I will be dropping a new post helping you and your family get AI ready for this back-to-school season, and here are the upcoming topics:

• Today, August 2 - What changed this year, and why blocking it is not going to work.

• August 9 - The 20 minute conversation to have before the first day, so your kid knows what to do when they encounter AI at school.

• August 16 - The Back-to-School AI Readiness Audit. A walk through your kids' accounts and your own, so everything is set up the way you want it before September. I will include screenshots for every setting and short videos too, so you can do the check quickly. I am making this one a paid subscriber post, because it took me most of a weekend to figure out all the checks for my own family. My goal is to save you that weekend of Googling so you can do the same check in 20 to 30 minutes.

• August 23 - The ten questions to ask your kid's school about AI at the start of the school year.

My goal is that by the end of August, right in time for back to school, you will have had the conversation, checked the accounts and sent your AI-related questions off to the school.

Wrapping Up

Thank you so much for reading, and I really do mean that. As a fellow parent I know how full your plate is right now, between the supply lists, the camp pickups and everything else August throws at us, so the fact that you gave this your time means a lot to me.

After going through everything with my daughter and reading the research papers, I have come to realize that the settings on these tools matter, that is why I am covering them in detail with screenshots on August 16, so we can all ensure the accounts our kids touch are set up in a proper and secure way. That said, the settings alone are not enough, we need to have the conversations and we need to use these tools with our kids.

So stay tuned for next Sunday, where I will walk through the exact 20-minute conversation I am having with my own kids before the first day of school.

And if you have a minute, drop a comment and let me know, are you planning to have the back-to-school AI talk with your kids? There is no wrong answer here, mine was still on the someday list two weeks ago. I would love to know where you are with it, because truth is we all learn from each other on this stuff.

- Manisha 💛

Thanks for reading AI Family Network Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

About the Author

Hey, I'm Manisha. I'm a parent, a lifelong learner, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how AI and tech shows up in our homes. I work with AI and automation professionally, but at home I'm navigating the same questions you probably are:

• When is it okay for my kid to use AI for schoolwork, and when is it not?

• What should they never type into one of these tools?

• Which of these tools are actually safe enough for our family?

AI Family Network is where I share what I'm learning as I explore AI and tech with my own family. I'm not here as an expert with all the answers. I'm here as a parent figuring it out in real time, just like you.

A Quick Note

Everything I share here comes from my personal experience using AI with my family. It's meant to inform and educate, not to replace professional, medical, legal, or educational advice. What works in my home may not be right for yours. AI tools change fast. School policies vary. Every family is different. So please, review tools yourself. Trust your instincts. And loop in the other trusted adults and educators in your life when you're making decisions. You know your family best.

You know that feeling when your kid comes home with homework in a subject you just aren’t good at? For some parents it’s math, others it is history and for me it’s French.

We live in Canada, which means French is part of the curriculum starting in early elementary. I did grow up in the Canadian system and I did take French, but that was about 30 years ago. I was fine with it in school, but I also never looked back at it after grade nine.

So when both my kids came home in the same week with French test to prep in just a few days, I had that very familiar parent moment. They wanted to do well and wanted my help, but truth is I was not the expert they needed.

It was too last minute to find a tutor and get them comfortable with a new person. Neither kid was thrilled about sitting down to study French either. They needed the practice, they knew they did, and they also really wanted it to feel fun. That’s the bind so many of us know: you need to help, and you also need it to feel like not-studying.

Why a study plan wasn’t the answer this time

My first instinct when something study-related lands on my kitchen table is usually NotebookLM. A couple of months ago I wrote about how I used it to turn my kids’ worksheets into a study plan in about 30 minutes, and that was genuinely a great experience. If you missed that post, you can read it here: How AI Turned Worksheets Into a Study Plan in 30 Minutes.

This week was a different kind of problem. A plan wasn’t the thing. Neither of my kids needed a study schedule or a summary of the material.

They needed to practice. Out loud. Interactively. At their own pace.

My son needed to hear French words and type them back. My daughter needed to drill adjective patterns again and again until the rules felt automatic.

That’s a different kind of tool, so I decided to opened up the Claude desktop app.

In this post, you’ll find:

• How I used the Claude desktop chat (no coding, no special tools) to build a tailored study game for each of my kids

• The exact materials I fed Claude for each child, and what I stripped out first for privacy

• How I matched each game to my kid’s learning style (voice-to-text for my Grade 2 son, a space-themed pattern drill for my older daughter)

• How Claude’s publish-to-URL feature let my kids study on their own devices without ever opening an AI chat

• A simple approach you can borrow next time your kid comes home with homework in a subject you can’t teach

What I gave Claude (and what I took out first)

Before I share what I built, I want to flag the privacy piece, because this is the part I’d want another parent to think about first.

Everything I fed to Claude was classroom material: screenshots of the words my son had to memorize, the slide deck my daughter’s teacher had shared for her unit, and a photo of a mock test she’d already done.

Before any of it went into the chat, I looked closely at each image and made sure three things were not on there:

• My child’s name

• The school’s name

• Any student ID or identifier

Once those were out, what was left was just generic classroom content, such as five French words, a list of adjective pairs and an exercise page. Nothing in there could be tied back to my child or their school. That’s the bar I use for myself whenever I’m sharing school materials with an AI tool, and it’s the bar I’d suggest for anyone reading this too.

With that cleared, here’s what I built.

My son’s game: hear the word, type it in

My son is in Grade 2, so his French test was a simple on paper test where the teacher would say a word out loud, and his job was to write/type the correct spelling.

I took a clean screenshot of the word list from his notebook and dropped it into Claude with a pretty straightforward ask. I told Claude my child is in Grade 2, he has a French spelling test coming up, and I wanted an interactive game where:

• He could tap a button to hear the word spoken out loud (As let’s be honest, I can’t say the French words)

• He could type the word into a box and click “check”

• If he was stuck, there was a “show the answer” button

• Each correct answer earned him points so there was a little incentive

• He could replay the word as many times as he needed

Within a couple of minutes, Claude built me a real working artifact: a little game right there in the chat. Tap the button, hear the French word, type it in, hit check.

Here’s the part I didn’t plan. My son added his own step. He’d tap to hear the word, then wrote it out on a piece of paper first, and then type it into the game to check his answer. He told me writing it first helped him remember.

Within a handful of rounds, he was getting all five words without hinting and without peeking. The side bonus nobody asked for: he got typing practice too!

My daughter’s game: space-themed, pattern-based, and five rounds deep

My daughter’s material was a bit more work, but still fun to build. She’s older, and she was working through French masculine and feminine adjective patterns. Rules like -eux turning into -euse, -if turning into -ive, -eur turning into -euse, and so on, along with a handful of irregulars she needed to memorize separately (beau to belle, vieux to vieille).

She had about 15 minutes over 2 nights to study, she likes flashcards, and she learns best when someone explains the rules AND gives her repetitive practice. Finally, she loves space and that turned out to matter more than I expected.

I gave Claude everything, which included her teacher’s full slide deck, a photo of her mock test showing where she’d gotten things wrong, a short profile of how she learns and I asked for an interactive game, space-themed, that would help her drill all of it.

What came next was five rounds of back and forth. Not because Claude got it wrong and I had to fight it, but because getting something genuinely useful for a kid takes iteration. I think that’s worth showing, because I don’t want anyone reading this to think one prompt does it all.

Round 1: What we were building

Claude came back with a few format options, such as “do you want her to type the answers or have multiple choice to pick from’, “do you want to have accents required in her response?” and a few more questions.

Round 2: The hint system

We noticed quickly my daughter need a hint to get some questions, so I asked Claude to build a hint system. Claude’s first version of the hint system basically handed her the answer, so I pushed back on Claude. Its second version still gave too much away, so I gave it some more direction and we landed on a three-step scaffolded hint: first a general nudge, then the name of the rule, then just the first two letters of the answer. She had to do the actual recall every time.

Round 3: The “wrong” answer that was actually right

At one point she typed “vieueuse” for vieux and the game marked her wrong. I asked Claude about it, as truth is I didn’t know the answer. Claude walked through the logic with us: she had correctly applied the -eux to -euse rule, and vieux just happens to be one of two exceptions that don’t follow it. I verified with my husband, who happens to know some more French then me. That turned into a real teaching moment for both of us.

Round 4: From chat widget to something she could actually use

The first version of the game only lived inside the Claude chat on my laptop. I asked Claude to rebuild it as a standalone HTML file that I could publish. That one change is what made the next part of this post possible.

Round 5: A printable mock test

Once she was completing 20 questions without a single hint, I knew she was ready. I asked Claude for a printable 10-question test with an answer key, so we could simulate paper conditions before the real thing.

She wrote that mock test at the kitchen table and did really well. She wrote her actual test at school the following day and also did really well. I’m not going to share her grade because she asked me to keep that quiet, and I’m going to respect that. I will say, as a mom watching her walk out the door that morning feeling ready, it was a proud moment.

The feature that changed how I think about AI at home

Here’s the piece that surprised me most, and honestly changed how I think about this whole thing.

Claude has a feature where you can publish an artifact to a public URL. You click publish, and it gives you a link that anyone can open in a browser. No Claude account required on their end. You can unpublish just as easily when you’re done.

My daughter has her own Chromebook that she uses at school. The day after we built the game together, I gave her the link. During library free-time, she pulled up the URL on her Chromebook and played through the game for a few more rounds. She told me after that it made her feel more ready for the test.

Sit with that for a second, because it’s the part I keep coming back to. I used AI to build the tool for my kid. She got an interactive game created for her needs. She didn’t have to open an AI tool, prompt it or anything. She was just playing a learning game that happened to be tailored to the exact material on her test.

What I actually want you to take from this

This one isn’t a framework with an acronym. It’s more of a small shift in how we think about AI at home.

We’re used to thinking about AI as the thing we use for our work: summarizing emails, drafting briefs, cleaning up a messy calendar. When homework lands on your kitchen table in a subject you can’t really help with, AI at home can be something different. It can be the thing you use to build something for your kid. They don’t need an account or access to the AI tool directly, they can work with you to build a game that matches how their specific brain learns best.

Three small things made this work for us, and I think they’d work for any parent trying the same thing:

1. I gave Claude the actual material* - Screenshots of the words, the real slide deck, a photo of the mock test. Not a vague description of what they were studying. The more specific the input, the more tailored the game.

2. I matched the game to the kid - Voice and typing for my Grade 2 son and a space theme game for my older daughter. Same tool, two completely different experiences, because they are two completely different learners.

3. I published it as a link - That small feature meant my kids weren’t using an AI tool to study. They were using a study tool that happened to be built with AI. Big difference, at least in my house.

Tools, privacy, and the small print

A few things worth noting in case you want to try something similar:

• The tool I used was the Claude desktop app on the $20/month paid plan. I didn’t hit any usage limits while building either game, even with five rounds of back and forth on my daughter’s version.

• The artifact publish feature lives inside the artifact view in Claude. One click to publish, one click to unpublish it.

• On privacy: strip the kid’s name, the school’s name, and any student ID or identifier from every screenshot before it goes into the chat. Classroom material is fine. Anything that ties it to a specific child is not.

• What the kids actually interacted with was an HTML file or a public URL. They weren’t using AI directly. I was.

AI tools change quickly, and features can move around or get renamed, so if something I described looks different in the app by the time you’re reading this, trust what you see in front of you.

Wrapping Up

If you’ve been in that corner of parenting where your kid needs help in a subject you can’t really teach, I hope this gives you a new option to try. You don’t need to be technical or an AI power user. You just need clean screenshots, a clear ask, and a willingness to go a couple of rounds until the game feels right for your kid.

I’d genuinely love to know: what subject would you want to build a study game for? Drop a comment, hit the like button if this was useful, and if you know another parent who’s in the same French-homework-at-8pm boat, forward it their way.

Thanks for reading. See you next time.

💛 Manisha

Thanks for reading AI Family Network Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

About the Author

Hey, I’m Manisha. I’m a parent, a lifelong learner, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how AI and tech shows up in our homes. I work with AI and automation professionally, but at home I’m navigating the same questions you probably are: How do I use these tools to make life a little easier, without giving up the things that matter most, like our privacy, our presence, and our connection to our kids?

That’s what this newsletter is about. Real experiments. Real conversations. And real takeaways you can actually use.

A Quick Note: Everything I share here comes from my personal experience using AI with my family. It’s meant to inform and educate, not to replace professional, medical, legal, or educational advice. AI tools are evolving fast, so what I cover today might change tomorrow. Always double-check, stay curious, and do what’s best for your family.

Whether your kids were home all week, you were juggling work calls between activities, or you spent half the week wondering if you’d planned enough (or too much), I see you. Having kids home for a full week while life keeps going is no small thing.

Last week, I shared how my kids and I sat down together with AI and planned an entire week of STEM experiments before spring break started. We used one prompt, refined it five times, and walked away with five days of activities, a Sunday supply list, and a daily morning prep plan. If you missed it, head over to How We Used AI to Plan a Week of Spring Break STEM Activities for Kids.

This week, I want to tell you what actually happened. Because planning is one thing. Executing with real kids, real messes, and real mornings is something else entirely.

By the end of this post, you’ll have:

• A real look at what worked (and what didn’t) when we followed AI’s plan for a week of STEM activities

• Proof that AI can take the mental load off activity planning without taking the fun out

• Three moments where my kids caught AI being wrong, and why that was the best part

• Ideas for how structure from AI can actually spark creativity in your kids

• Confidence that using AI with your kids is one of the best ways to introduce them to it

Sunday Night: Everything in a Box

Here’s what made this whole week possible: on Sunday, I gathered every supply we needed for all five experiments and put them in one box.

That’s it. One box.

AI had given us a Sunday prep checklist that totalled up everything we needed across the week. So instead of reading through five different experiment instructions and mentally tracking what we needed, I had one list. I grabbed what we already had at home, picked up a few things, and packed it all into a box that sat on the kitchen counter.

Then each morning, I had a separate list of what to pull out of the box and lay on the kitchen table for that day’s activity. I could do it while drinking my coffee in about five minutes. By the time the kids came down, everything was ready to go. No scrambling, no “hold on, I need to find the vinegar,” no running around the house ten minutes before the activity trying to gather supplies while already feeling burned out.

That setup is what kept my mental energy in check all week. It kept my emotions in check too. And honestly, it’s what made this week not just possible, but genuinely fun for me.

Monday: Colorful Butterflies and a Calm Start

Our first experiment was Colorful Biology, where the kids colored coffee filters with markers, dipped them into water, and watched the colors spread and blend. Simple, beautiful, and the perfect way to start the week.

What I noticed most about Monday wasn’t the experiment itself. It was how I felt. I wasn’t stressed or rushing. I walked over to the kitchen table with the kids and everything was there. That feeling alone told me this AI-planned week was going to work.

When AI Missed a Step (and My Kids Caught It)

Tuesday was a float and sink experiment with oil and water. The activity itself was straightforward, but something interesting happened when the kids read through AI’s instructions.

The very first step said something like, “Look in your cup and notice how the oil sits on top of the water.”

Both my kids stopped and looked at each other. Wait, what cup? AI never told us to put the oil and water in the same cup. It just assumed we’d figure that out. It skipped a step entirely.

My kids thought this was hilarious. They joked, “We need to use our human brain!” And they were right. AI gave us a solid starting point, but it missed something that any human reading those instructions would catch. We had to think critically, fill in the gap ourselves, and figure out what AI meant.

I didn’t turn this into a lecture. I didn’t sit them down and say, “Now kids, let’s discuss AI limitations.” It just happened naturally, in the middle of a fun experiment, with oil and water on the table. That’s exactly the kind of AI conversation I want to have with my kids.

This is what the LEAD framework’s “Always Verify” looks like in real life. I wrote about the LEAD mindset a few weeks ago in 49% of Parents Haven’t Talked to Their Kids About AI: The LEAD Framework Fixes That. You don’t need to be an AI expert to guide your kids. You just need to be present, curious, and willing to check the work together.

The Balloon That Made Everyone’s Eyes Light Up

Wednesday was the one that made me remember exactly why I love doing activities with my kids.

We filled a balloon with baking soda, poured vinegar into a water bottle, stretched the balloon over the top, and then flipped the balloon up so the baking soda dropped into the vinegar. The gas from the chemical reaction started inflating the balloon right there on the bottle.

The look on my 7-year-old’s face when that balloon started growing. Pure wonder, eyes wide, mouth open, just watching this balloon slowly expand. Both kids were smiling with excitement.

That moment right there is why I enjoyed planning activities like this for my kids. The win: AI made the planning easier, so I could actually be present for it.

When AI’s Instructions Fell Short — And We Figured It Out Together

Wednesday was all about Engineering, and the instructions for this one weren’t great. AI gave us the general idea, but the steps weren’t clear enough to actually build popsicle stick catapult without some trial and error.

We stayed the course and figured it out. The kids and I worked through it together, tried a few approaches, and eventually got our catapult working. It was another chance to talk about how AI doesn’t always explain things perfectly, and that’s okay. Sometimes you have to be creative and problem-solve your way through it.

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Friday: The Ooblock Mess (and the Slime They’d Been Waiting For)

All week, my kids had been counting down to Friday’s experiment: Ooblock. In last week’s post, I mentioned my kids were nuts about slime and couldn’t wait for this one.

Ooblock is corn starch, food coloring, and water mixed together. And let me tell you, it got messy fast.

But my daughter loved it the most. She started making structures out of the Ooblock, molding it into different shapes and building things. What started as a simple science experiment turned into a full creative session. She was at that table for a while, just building and experimenting with the texture.

It was the perfect way to end the week. Messy, creative, and exactly the kind of play I want for my kids.

The Creativity That Surprised Me Most

If you asked me before this week whether using AI to plan activities would make things feel too structured or rigid, I wouldn’t have known what to say. That was a concern in the back of my mind.

It turned out to be the opposite.

My daughter took the AI-generated instructions and turned each day into these beautiful single-page instruction cards. She put them up on our fridge as a calendar, with each day’s card pinned to it. She took something structured and made it her own. That initiative, that creativity, came entirely from her.

The creativity didn’t stop there. Every time we finished an experiment, there were leftover supplies: popsicle sticks, rubber bands, baking soda, corn starch. Each kid would grab the extras and start building their own creations. My son built what he called “the four-point shooter” out of leftover popsicle sticks and glue. My daughter mixed leftover corn starch and water and molded it into all sorts of things.

I recently came across a post from The Art of Play on Substack about how you teach creativity, and it really resonated with what I saw this week. You don’t teach creativity by giving kids a blank page and saying “be creative.” You give them a starting point, some structure, some materials, and then you step back. That’s exactly what happened here. AI gave us the structure, but the creativity came from the kids.

What My Kids Actually Thought

I sat down with both kids after the week and asked them about the experience. Here’s what they said, in their own words.

My eldest said her favorite activity was Monday’s coffee filter butterflies (”Colourful Biology”). When I asked how she felt AI did with the instructions, she said plainly: “It was missing some part and she had to problem solve to figure out things on her own.” She also mentioned the slingshot she built from leftover supplies. And when I asked if we should do this again, she didn’t hesitate: “YES!”

My youngest could barely contain his excitement talking about the balloon experiment. He walked me through the entire process, describing how we put stuff in the bottle, stuck the balloon on top, flipped it over, and watched it grow. That was his clear favorite. His second favorite was the Ooblock, and he ranked all five experiments, making sure I knew he liked every single one.

What struck me most is how natural the whole conversation felt. They weren’t talking about AI. They were talking about the experiments, the fun, the things they built. AI was just the tool that made it happen, and it faded into the background exactly the way it should.

Why Using AI With Your Kids Is the Best Way to Teach Them

There’s a lot of conversation right now about building with AI in public. People share their vibe coding sessions, their AI-powered workflows, how they’re using AI to move faster at work.

What I’m doing is a little different. I’m using AI with my kids, in public.

And here’s what this week made clear: the best way to teach your kids about AI isn’t a sit-down lecture. It isn’t showing them a demo. It isn’t handing them a tablet and saying “try ChatGPT.”

It’s using AI together for something fun, and then being present when the teachable moments show up on their own.

This week, my kids learned that AI can miss steps, that instructions aren’t always perfect, that you still need your own brain to fill in the gaps. They learned all of this while painting butterflies, inflating balloons, and getting their hands covered in Ooblock. Not a single part of it felt like a lesson.

If you’re a parent wondering how to introduce your kids to AI, try this: use it with them to plan something they’re excited about. It could be activities, a recipe, a weekend project. Sit together, talk through the prompt, and then actually do the thing. The AI conversation will happen naturally.

Wrapping Up

This week reminded me that AI isn’t just about productivity or saving time, although it absolutely did both. It’s about creating space. Space to be present with my kids instead of stressed about logistics. Space for them to be creative with the materials in front of them. Space for real conversations about AI to happen without anyone feeling like they’re being taught.

If you tried the prompt from last week, I’d love to hear how your spring break went. Drop a comment or hit reply. Tell me what experiments your kids loved, what went sideways, and whether you’d do it again.

And if you found this useful, tapping the like button really does help other parents find this community. Thank you so much for reading. I know how busy spring break recovery is, and the fact that you made it to the end means a lot.

- Manisha 💛

Thanks for reading AI Family Network Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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About the Author

Hey, I’m Manisha. I’m a parent, a lifelong learner, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how AI and tech shows up in our homes. I work with AI and automation professionally, but at home I’m navigating the same questions you probably are:

• What is ChatGPT?

• Can I use ChatGPT for my homework?

• How about Gemini?

AI Family Network is where I share what I’m learning as I explore AI and tech with my own family. I’m not here as an expert with all the answers. I’m here as a parent figuring it out in real time, just like you.

A Quick Note

Everything I share here comes from my personal experience using AI with my family. It’s meant to inform and educate, not to replace professional, medical, legal, or educational advice. What works in my home may not be right for yours. AI tools change fast. School policies vary. Every family is different. So please, review tools yourself. Trust your instincts. And loop in the other trusted adults and educators in your life when you’re making decisions. You know your family best.

“We have a science test next week.”

If you’re a parent, you know exactly what happens next. You look at the stack of worksheets and handouts your child brings home, and you start the mental math. How many days do we have? What topics do we need to cover? When are we going to fit studying in between everything else?

You sit down together, flip through the pages, and try to figure out the best way to make it all stick. Maybe you start reading through the notes out loud. Maybe you grab some index cards and start writing flashcards by hand. Maybe you quiz them from the worksheet and watch them stare at the ceiling trying to remember the answer.

It’s familiar. And you do it because you love them and you want them to feel prepared. But there’s a question that kept nagging at me — what if a different approach can help my child learn?

But What If Reading Isn’t How They Learn Best?

This is something I’ve thought about for years — because I lived it.

As a child, I had a hard time learning through reading. It didn’t come easily to me, and it took me a number of years to learn how to read. My parents ended up hiring tutors who supported me, and I’m grateful for that. But it made traditional school really difficult. The typical way school taught was through worksheets and reading material, but that was tough for me.

As I grew older, I realized pretty quickly through testing and trying different approaches that I learned better through audio, video, flashcards, and visuals. Over time, my parents and I adapted the tools I used to study. But it was not easy back in the 1990s to find ways to convert material that was normally in a large textbook with small print into audio or video. I did my best and I had a lot of good support, but the options just weren’t there the way they are today.

I think about that a lot now as a parent, as I feel today we have this incredible unlock, where from our own computers at home, we can take learning material and turn it into different formats. We can take textbook information and turn it into audio, video, infographics, flashcards, and more. For anyone who was like me growing up, that’s a game changer. And for kids who learn differently today — the tools are finally here. There’s no reason to wait.

So when my child had a science test coming up on the topic of energy, I thought — let’s try something different.

Why I Picked NotebookLM (and Not ChatGPT or Gemini)

That decision to try something different led to evaluating the AI tools available: ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and NotebookLM. I needed to figure out the best and safest tool for my child to use for studying.

I landed on NotebookLM. And the reason comes down to one key feature: NotebookLM grounds itself on the information YOU give it. It’s not going to go out to the web and pull random information on the topic. If I upload my child’s worksheets and handouts, it’s going to work with that material and only that material. That was a core requirement for me — I needed the tool to study the actual content from their science unit on energy, not the internet’s version of it.

If you’re new to NotebookLM, I covered how it works and why I love it in my post on How Parents Can Use AI to Actually Understand Credit Card Benefits Fine Print. That post walks through the basics of setting it up and why it’s become one of my go-to tools.

The privacy piece also mattered to me. I’ve written before about what data AI tools actually collect on you — and that’s a big reason I chose NotebookLM for study materials. I didn’t want my child’s class content being fed into training data for a large language model. NotebookLM gave me more confidence on that front.

From Worksheets to a Study Plan in 30 Minutes

With NotebookLM selected, the next step was figuring out: how do we actually get the study material in there?

Here’s what I did:

1. Sourced the material. I talked to the teacher to get some additional resources. I used the handouts my child had from class, along with some supplementary material on the topic that I sourced online.

2. Loaded it into NotebookLM. Once I had everything gathered, I uploaded all the source material into a new notebook. Now I had a notebook grounded on the actual science unit content, ready to go.

3. Figured out the key topics. My child and I sat down together, went through the material, and identified the key topics they needed to study for the energy unit.

4. Started generating study materials. I asked NotebookLM to create videos, flashcards, quizzes, and infographics on each topic.

Within about 30 minutes, we had NotebookLM generating 6 to 8 videos covering different topics in the energy unit. We had quizzes, flashcards, and the start of a real study plan.

Here’s one of the prompts I used to generate a video:

Using the provided sources, create a very detailed, child-friendly video that covers the following topics to help a grade 6 student prepare for a science test on the unit. Topics are: Impacts of Electrical Energy Generation, Conserving Energy, Electricity Journal, Electricity Journal Reflection, Energy Use and Technology

What Three Days of AI-Assisted Studying Actually Looked Like

With all the materials generated, we put together a 3-day study plan.

Every day included:

• 1 to 3 short videos to watch

• One quiz

• 10 to 15 flashcards (sometimes up to 20 or 30 depending on the topic)

Each night was about 20 to 25 minutes of studying. It was nicely broken up, felt manageable, and honestly — my child enjoyed it.

The real magic happened when we noticed gaps. After going through quizzes and flashcards, there were specific areas where the material wasn’t quite clicking. So my husband and I would take that, go back to NotebookLM, and generate a targeted infographic just on that topic.

For example, we noticed my child was having trouble understanding the structure of an atom and how charge is created. So we generated a focused infographic (below) just on that using the prompt below in NotebookLM:

Focus only on the atom, including the structure of the atom, explaining how charge is created, the location of the main components in the atom, and where different types of energy are stored. The audience is a grade 6 student who is learning about atoms and how they relate to charge as part of the broader electricity topic. Keep it on a white background.

By visualizing the concept and walking through it together, it helped my child understand the material in a way that just re-reading the worksheet hadn’t. That’s the power of meeting kids where they learn.

And the result? My child did great on the test. But beyond the grade, what I loved is that they actually felt confident going in. The studying didn’t feel like a grind — it felt like something we were building together.

Here’s something I didn’t expect: we ended up sharing the study materials we created with one of my child’s friends. And their friend thanked us afterward because the videos and flashcards helped them understand the material better too. That felt really good — one notebook, and it helped more than just our family.

You Can Do This Too: 5 Steps to Get Started

Before we dive into the process, one important note: be selective. You don’t need to do this for every subject, for every test. Use it where you think your child needs the material presented in a different way to help the learning process.

1. Source the Material Talk to the teacher, gather worksheets, handouts, and notes your child has from the unit. If needed, source some material from the internet too.

2. Load It Into NotebookLM Go to NotebookLM, create a new notebook, and upload your sources. That’s it — the tool is now grounded on your child’s actual study material.

3. Generate Study Materials Use the Studio features to generate videos, audio overviews, flashcards, quizzes, infographics, and slides. Tailor the prompts to your child’s needs. If they learn better by watching, focus on videos. If they need repetition, go heavy on flashcards and quizzes. You know your child best.

4. Study Together Set a daily plan — even 20 to 25 minutes is enough. Mix the formats: watch a video, do some flashcards, take a quiz. Keep it manageable so it doesn’t feel overwhelming.

5. Fill the Gaps As you study together, notice where your child is struggling. Go back to NotebookLM and generate targeted content — an infographic on that specific concept, a quiz focused on that one area. This is where AI really shines: you can create custom learning material for exactly the spots your child needs help with, in minutes.

Showing kids how we can go through the framework to increase their knowledge, in a style that works best for them, also encourages them to follow a similar structure as they grow older.

Why This Matters Beyond One Test

Here’s what I really want to leave you with.

This isn’t about AI doing the work for your child. It’s the opposite — we sat together, we went through the material, we identified the topics, we reviewed the outputs, and we studied together. AI didn’t replace studying, instead it transformed the format so the studying could actually work for their learning style.

Just like when my son and I discovered AI could be confidently wrong about a simple number chart (you can read about that adventure in A Number Chart, a 7-Year-Old, and What AI Got Wrong), we always check the material NotebookLM generates against the original sources. AI is a tool, not a replacement for thinking.

I think one of the biggest advantages of AI is that it’s going to help learners who just don’t learn the traditional ways. Reading is definitely a huge skill and I think it’s an important one — but not everyone learns through just reading. Some people need video, audio, flashcards, or visuals.

With AI, we can leverage these tools in a responsible way and teach our children to do the same. My child’s teacher said something that stuck with me. She liked that I was teaching my child to use AI responsibly, in a way that they can grow with over the years. That’s my goal, not to hand them a tool and say “go use it” (because they might accidentally use it to write their whole essay). Instead, it’s about showing them: here’s how you can use a tool like NotebookLM to take your class material and turn it into a video that helps you learn better because of your learning style.

That’s a skill they’ll carry with them far beyond one science test.

Wrapping Up

As always, I want to thank you for reading. I really appreciate you taking the time, and I’m excited if you made it all the way to the end.

If this resonated with you — if you’ve been in that “test next week” scramble or you have a child who learns a little differently — I’d love to hear from you. Drop a comment and let me know: have you tried using AI tools to help with studying? What worked? What didn’t?

And if you found this helpful, please hit that like button or share it with another parent who might benefit. It means more than you know.

Until next time,

- Manisha 💛

About the Author

Hey, I’m Manisha. I’m a parent, a lifelong learner, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how AI and tech shows up in our homes. I work with AI and automation professionally, but at home I’m navigating the same questions you probably are:

• What is ChatGPT?

• Can I use ChatGPT for my homework?

• How about Gemini?

AI Family Network is where I share what I’m learning as I explore AI and tech with my own family. I’m not here as an expert with all the answers. I’m here as a parent figuring it out in real time, just like you.

A Quick Note

Everything I share here comes from my personal experience using AI with my family. It’s meant to inform and educate, not to replace professional, medical, legal, or educational advice. What works in my home may not be right for yours. AI tools change fast. School policies vary. Every family is different. So please, review tools yourself. Trust your instincts. And loop in the other trusted adults and educators in your life when you’re making decisions. You know your family best.

Happy New Year, everyone. 💛

Before anything else, I just want to say thank you. Thank you for subscribing in 2025. Thank you for reading, for commenting, for being curious alongside me. I’m genuinely excited to grow this little corner of the internet with you in 2026.

This past weekend, I took some time to reflect on 2025. And wow, a lot changed.

At the start of last year, I was using AI in very simple ways. Asking it to rewrite an email. Helping me word something tricky. Just odd tasks here and there. Nothing fancy.

But as the year went on, AI slowly became part of my daily workflow. I started automating repetitive tasks, building small projects, creating custom tools to help me work smarter. I learned where AI shines and where it doesn’t. I learned how powerful it can be when you treat it as a tool, not a threat. Not a replacement for thinking.

When Did AI Become a Family Conversation?

Around the middle of 2025, I realized I wasn’t the only one paying attention to AI.

There were some very curious observers in my house. My own kids.

Suddenly, dinner conversations started sounding like this:

“Hey Mom, what’s ChatGPT?”

“Someone at school used Gemini today. What is it?”

“Have you heard of something called Nano Banana?”

No matter how much I tried to keep AI as a “work thing,” it was already part of their world. At school. At home. In conversations with friends. That’s when it clicked for me. AI wasn’t just a work skill anymore. It was a parenting topic.

Toward the end of 2025, I flipped the switch. I stopped treating AI as something I used around my family and started exploring it with them. We figured things out together. It gave me a whole new perspective on learning a tool alongside my kids instead of just for them.

What Are My New Year’s Resolutions as a Parent in an AI World?

Like everyone else, I’m making resolutions this year. (Yes, I’ll probably still aim to eat better and move more. We all do that, right? 😅)

But I’m also starting 2026 with four goals that feel different. Ones I think matter as AI becomes more mainstream in our homes.

1. How Can Parents Be More Aware of What We Share Online?

My first resolution is Awareness.

I want to be more aware about what I put out into the online world, especially when it involves my kids. Photos today aren’t just photos for grandma anymore. They’re data. I’ll be writing more about this in the coming weeks, because I know I’m not the only parent thinking about it.

2. Can AI Help Parents Learn What We’ve Been Putting Off?

My second resolution is Learning.

This year, I’m planning to use AI as a learning partner when it comes parenting. Not to replace reading or thinking, but to help me revisit ideas, summarize concepts, and reflect more deeply.

3. How Can AI Help Families Get Organized?

My third resolution is Organization.

Parenting involves constant context switching:

• School emails

• Activities

• Schedules

• Random notes

• Half-finished ideas

My goal this year is to use AI to help me get organized and carry some of the context for me.

4. What Are Some Fun Ways Families Can Explore Tech Together?

And last - Fun.

This year, I’ll also be sharing fun ways my family explores tech and AI together. iPhone Shortcuts that make the kids laugh while we learn together.

What’s Coming Next at AI Family Network?

Here’s the part I’m most excited about.

Each of these resolutions (Awareness, Learning, Organization, and Fun) will become its own thread here in 2026. I’ll be sharing practical tools, real examples, and ways to explore AI and tech with your family.

What Are Your 2026 Resolutions?

I’d love to hear from you.

Are any of your resolutions related to AI? Learning something new? Exploring technology with your kids? Hit reply and tell me. Those conversations shape where this newsletter goes next.

Here’s to a curious, playful, and thoughtful 2026.

— Manisha

About the Author

Hey, I’m Manisha. I’m a parent, a lifelong learner, and someone who spends a lot of time thinking about how AI and tech shows up in our homes. I work with AI and automation professionally, but at home I’m navigating the same questions you probably are:

• What is ChatGPT?

• Can I use ChatGPT for my homework?

• How about Gemini?

AI Family Network is where I share what I’m learning as I explore AI and tech with my own family. I’m not here as an expert with all the answers. I’m here as a parent figuring it out in real time, just like you.

A Quick Note

Everything I share here comes from my personal experience using AI with my family. It’s meant to inform and educate, not to replace professional, medical, legal, or educational advice. What works in my home may not be right for yours. AI tools change fast. School policies vary. Every family is different. So please, review tools yourself. Trust your instincts. And loop in the other trusted adults and educators in your life when you’re making decisions. You know your family best.

Welcome to Part 3 of our three-part series on iPhone Shortcuts and being curious with tech as a family.

If you’re jumping in here, you can catch up on the first two parts. Part 1 was about what iPhone Shortcuts are and the very first shortcut I built for my kids (a one-tap FaceTime call to Grandma that saved me during many a morning shower).

• Read it at -

Part 2 was where things shifted. My kids helped design a shortcut to capture Christmas memories, tracking who gave which gift with a quick photo.

• Read it at -

Now for Part 3 where things naturally went next. Over winter break, my kids wanted to get curious about AI. And instead of waiting until I felt like I “knew it well enough” to teach them? I decided to learn alongside them.

The Winter Break Question: Can We Build a Game?

Winter break naturally brings a little more space. More time together. More “what if?” questions floating around the house.

One of those questions turned into an idea. The kids wanted to build a game they could play anywhere. Something simple and fun they could pull out while traveling or waiting around. They landed on charades.

The challenge was turning that idea into something usable. And this time, they wanted to build it themselves using an iPhone Shortcut.

But before we touched AI, they tried solving it on their own first. That part mattered to me. I wanted them to try thinking through the problem before reaching for a tool.

Starting Without AI: Trying to Solve the Problem Ourselves

We talked through what the game needed to do. It needed a list of charades ideas, a way to pick one at random, and it had to be fast enough to use anywhere.

They quickly realized the hardest part wasn’t the shortcut itself. It was coming up with enough good charades ideas. I mean, how many animals and actions can you brainstorm before you run out of steam? They got a list of 10-15 items going, but needed more.

That’s when someone said, “Could we use AI to help with the list?”

I loved that moment. AI didn’t replace their thinking. It came in as a helper, after they’d already done the work of figuring out what they needed.

Learning to Prompt AI (and Why the First Prompt Wasn’t Enough)

The first prompt they tried was simple: “Give me 20 items for a charades game.”

AI gave them a list. Technically, it worked, some good items, but what is a Scared Mouse?

So I asked them a question. “If you were explaining this to your cousin, what would you tell them so they actually understood what you wanted?”

That’s when things clicked for them. They started adding detail. They talked about age. They talked about categories. They talked about what would actually be fun to act out.

Together, we ended up with this prompt, which you can reuse too.

Create a list of 10-50 charades ideas suitable for kids aged [age range]. Include a mix of categories: animals, actions, sports, jobs, and objects. Keep each item short (1-3 words), simple, and fun to act out. Return the results as plain text, one item per line, with no numbering or emojis.

We also talked about how they could change it. They could adjust the age range, add or remove categories, and guide the tool instead of expecting it to guess.

That was the big lesson here. AI doesn’t know what you mean unless you explain it clearly. It’s like giving directions to someone who’s never been to your neighbourhood. You have to be specific.

When AI Was Confident (and Wrong)

Then we hit a harder problem. We needed the shortcut to pick a random item from the list. We tried a number of things, but were a bit lost, again we decided let’s see if AI can help.

It gave us several suggestions. It sounded confident. None of them worked.

This was one of the most important moments in the whole process. My kids got to see, in real time, that AI can be wrong even when it sounds completely sure of itself.

We had a conversation about where AI gets its information, how it pulls from the web, and why that information isn’t always correct or up to date.

What We Did Instead: Humans in the Loop

Instead of trusting AI blindly, we treated it like any other tool. It can give you information, but you still have to check that information before you act on it.

We tried some of the safe suggestions. When something didn’t work, we stopped and asked more questions. We also started searching for other explanations online, talking it through with another parent, and thinking out loud together as a family.

We reinforced a simple rule in our house: if something feels confusing or unclear, pause and ask. AI is helpful, but humans still make the decisions. Humans are still in the driver’s seat.

What the Kids Learned About AI

This experience taught my kids a few important things about how AI actually works.

AI can help, but it can’t think for you. It needs context, clarity, and guidance. It’s a tool my children can use to help, but they still need to test, question, and decide what to do with what it gives them.

Most importantly? AI isn’t something to be afraid of. It’s something to understand. And learning that together felt good for all of us. Not overwhelming. Just... curiosity in action.

The Result: A Charades Shortcut We Actually Use

In the end, the kids built a charades shortcut they are proud of. It lives on my iPad home screen. One tap starts the game. There are 20-30 items to act out.

We use it while traveling, at the airport, visiting family, waiting around on the go. No cards. No setup. No mess. Just a simple game we can play anywhere, built by my kids with a little help from AI.

Bonus: Free Charades iPhone Shortcut

To wrap up this series, we’re sharing the charades shortcut with you.

You can download it using the link below, add it to your Shortcuts app, and use the Share button to place it on your home screen. It’s perfect for New Year’s Eve, family gatherings, or just keeping kids entertained while you’re out and about.

Download the Shortcut Now

Final Reflection: Looking Back on the Series

This series didn’t start with AI. It started with a simple shortcut. A way to let my little ones FaceTime Grandma without me having to shout instructions through the bathroom door. Then it moved into building together, capturing holiday memories in a way that actually worked on Christmas morning. Then it grew into learning how AI works and where it can fall short.

Here’s the thing I want you to take away from all of this. You don’t need to have all the answers to explore technology with your kids. You don’t need to be an expert. You just need curiosity and a willingness to figure it out alongside them.

That’s what I did. And honestly? I learned as much as they did.

Tell Us

Did you enjoy this series? Are you exploring tech together as a family? I’d love to hear about it. And if you want to see more series like this, let me know.

My kid was sick yesterday and really wanted chocolate chip cookies.

I wanted to make them healthier—whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, applesauce, eggs. But no brown sugar (because I didn’t have any and didn’t want to head out).

I Googled for a recipe. After visiting a dozen sites, I still couldn’t find what I needed. Every recipe was almost right, but not quite.

So I showed my son: let’s try ChatGPT.

We prompted it together. Told it exactly what we wanted.

Prompt We Used

We’re under the weather and want to make chocolate chip cookies, but these are not any chocolate chip cookies. We want the cookies to include a couple of different things. Along with the standard ingredients, we want to make sure it includes whole wheat flour, flaxseed meal, applesauce, and eggs. We want these ingredients as we’re a bit under the weather and we’re looking to feel better. Can you whip up a recipe for us?

A few minutes later? A recipe that actually worked.

I made the cookies. He gobbled them up.

And he saw something important: AI isn’t just something to be scared of. It’s a tool we can use safely, together.

Yes, we talk about what not to share with AI (personal info, private stuff, family details), using this handy image.

But we also talk about what it can do:

• 📚 Help with homework

• 💡 Spark creativity

• 🍪 Solve little problems, like finding the perfect cookie recipe

That’s the balance I’m trying to teach.

Not fear. Not blind trust.

Just: here’s how we use this tool safely, and here’s why it’s worth learning.

Including the recipe we made together below, in case you want to whip some up too.

Stay tuned for the next issue when we dive into holiday toys and AI.

Whole Wheat + Flax Chocolate Chip Cookies

Egg + Applesauce • No Brown Sugar
Makes: ~20 cookies

Ingredients

• ½ cup unsalted butter, softened

• ¾ cup white sugar

• 1 large egg

• ¼ cup unsweetened applesauce

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• 1 ¼ cups whole wheat flour

• ¼ cup flaxseed meal (ground flax)

• ½ tsp baking soda

• ½ tsp baking powder

• ¼ tsp salt

• 1 cup chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C). Line a baking sheet with parchment.

2. In a large bowl, cream butter + white sugar until fluffy (1–2 min).

3. Add the egg, applesauce, and vanilla. Mix until smooth.

4. In another bowl, whisk together:

   • whole wheat flour

   • flaxseed meal

   • baking soda

   • baking powder

   • salt

5. Add dry ingredients to the wet. Mix gently until combined — don’t overmix or cookies get dense.

6. Fold in chocolate chips.

7. Scoop tablespoon-sized balls onto the baking sheet.
   (For flatter cookies, gently press the tops.)

8. Bake 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centers look slightly soft.

9. Cool on the tray for 5 minutes, then move to a rack.

Texture Tips

• Chewier cookies: reduce applesauce to 3 tbsp or add +1 tbsp melted butter.

• Crispier cookies: flatten dough before baking.

• Less cakey: replace 2 tbsp applesauce with an extra egg yolk.