For Parents — The Experiment Club

The Short Version

About 2 hours of work per day, mostly independent. Kids meet at least once per week to present what they learned — parents encouraged to attend. There's structure for each day and each meetup, but kids are expected to go further on their own. Boredom is intentional. Curiosity needs room to breathe.

How It Works

Common Questions

⏱ How much time should my child set aside each day?

About 2 hours of focused work per day. That's intentional — it leaves room for downtime and following a thread of curiosity. Boredom is part of the design. Some of the best ideas come from having enough empty space to actually think.

👤 Is this independent work, or do kids work together?

The work is independent, but kids are welcome to sit together and do it side by side. There are also naturally collaborative moments — for example, when building their online game, kids need to recruit others to playtest it and fix what breaks.

📅 Do they meet as a group? How often?

At least once at the end of each week. Each kid presents something — a short talk, a video, a demo, or answers to discussion questions. The agenda is already set up for each project; think of it as a starting point that can evolve. Knowing they'll have to present changes how kids engage with the work all week.

👪 What's the parent's role?

Parent participation is encouraged — at meetups and throughout the program. You're welcome to give feedback, take initiative, and drive aspects of it. Think of the structure as a starting point, not a rulebook. All the rules are made up — if something isn't working, we change it. Show up, stay curious, and make it your own.

🗂 How much structure is there?

Each week has daily tasks, discussion questions in four categories (factual, analytical, philosophical, creative), and a Saturday meetup agenda. Think of it as a scaffold, not a script — kids are expected to go further on their own. If something isn't working, we adapt as we go.

What to Get

Supplies & Setup by Project

Most projects need nothing beyond a curious mind. A few need a physical kit or a free account. Here's what to have ready before each week starts.

📚 Week 1 · June 22

Reading a Banned Book

A banned book of their choosing ~$10–15 Check the program page for suggested titles. The local library often has these — the irony is not lost on us.
A notebook or journal Optional For daily journal prompts. Paper works well here — something about writing by hand for this project.

🙏 Week 2 · June 29

Spirituality & Sikhism

A journal or notebook ~$5–15 Used for daily affirmations and a gratitude journal — a physical notebook works best for this kind of reflective writing.
Sacred text from your own tradition Optional The program uses the Japji Sahib (links provided). If your family follows a different tradition and prefers to use another text, bring it — the reflection exercises work with any scripture.

⚛️ Week 3 · July 6

Nanotechnology

Thames & Kosmos Nanotechnology Science Experiment Kit ~$50–70 Hands-on experiments with real nanoscale phenomena. Available on Amazon — order in advance so it arrives before July 6.
Basic safety supplies Usually on hand Safety glasses and gloves — included in most kits, but worth confirming.

🖨️ Week 4 · July 13

3D Modelling

Blender (3D design software) Free Download at blender.org. Runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Install before the week starts.
Access to R's 3D printer Provided Kids submit STL files and R helps them print. Keep designs small — large prints can take a full day. Max build size: 180 × 180 × 180 mm.

📊 Summer 2025 · Data Science

Data Exploration with Python

Anaconda Free Installs Python, Jupyter Notebook, pandas, and matplotlib all in one go. Download at anaconda.com — install before the week starts. About 5 GB of disk space needed.
Jupyter Notebook Included with Anaconda Comes bundled with Anaconda — no separate install. This is where kids write and run their Python code, side by side with their notes and graphs.
Cricket dataset Free download Kids download a CSV file from Cricsheet or Kaggle (both free, links on the program page). No account needed for Cricsheet; Kaggle requires a free signup.

🎮 Weeks 5–6 · July 20

Building an Online Game

GitHub account (the kid's own) Free Minimum age is 13. Kids create their own account — this is where they store and publish their game. github.com/signup
Claude AI access (parent's account) Parent account only Claude's Terms of Service require users to be 18+. Kids use a parent's claude.ai account to vibe-code their game with AI assistance. A free account works; Claude Pro is faster.
A text editor Free VS Code (code.visualstudio.com) is the recommendation. Lightweight and what most developers actually use.

🤖 Weeks 7–8 · Aug 3 & 10

ML Modelling with Python

Most Ambitious Course This is the most ambitious part of the summer. The goal is not to build a perfect AI model — the goal is to get kids' hands on real machine learning concepts: training data, test data, confusion matrices, and making predictions from real numbers. If a kid finishes with a working model that's 65% accurate and understands why it fails, that's a complete success.

Anaconda + Jupyter Already installed Same setup as Data Exploration with Python — nothing new to install if they completed that course first.
scikit-learn Free — one pip install The standard Python ML library. Kids install it with one command in Jupyter on Day 1 — instructions are on the program page.
A Kaggle dataset Free download Kids pick any dataset that interests them from kaggle.com/datasets. Cricket data from the previous course works, or they can choose something entirely different.
Prerequisite: Data Exploration with Python Required Kids who haven't done the Data Exploration course will struggle here. pandas, Jupyter, and matplotlib fluency are assumed from Day 1.