The Raspbian operating system, originally designed for the small Raspberry Pi computer, now has a version for laptops and PCs. Raspbian runs nicely on computers that are no longer deemed powerful enough to run the latest Windows or MacOS versions. Raspbian is great if you're setting up a kids' makerspace or school Code...
The Pimoroni Pirate Radio Kit is a fun way to listen to your favourite streams. Although a sample playlist is provided, here's some links to get you started looking for some kid-friendly/educational streams..
Here's a couple of examples using the Kitronik ZIP Halo for the BBC micro:bit - that leverage the circular RGB LED configuration. Essentially, the Kitronik ZIP LEDs are programmed in the same way as Adafruit NeoPixels, as documented in the BBC micro:bit MicroPython documentation found online at: https://microbit-micropython.readthedocs.io/en/latest/neopixel.html
The BBC micro:bit supports the I²C bus protocol, for communicating with other devices, like sensors. In this post, I've used MicroPython to demonstrate, but the principles can easily be translated to lower and higher level languages.