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You could go with something like the Adafruit FunHouse: https://www.adafruit.com/product/4985

WiFi, lots of built in hardware (temp + humidity, light, microphone, buzzer, buttons, LEDs, etc), and CircuitPython means you can program it with a USB cable and a plain old text editor.

More bucks than the "smallest ESP-whatever" dev board, but handy for learning.

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And it's shaped like a house? Fantastic!

It may be more bucks, but it's still cheap for the amount of documentation you get. Plus, you only need one, and then you can graduate to the cheap ESP32 boards.

Thanks @adbachman, I’ve been looking at similar items like this for a home automation project that doesn’t rely on Google or Amazin

Have a look at Tasmota. I already run a boad with a BME280 sensor. The ESP32 port is even more featureful, it includes a Python like programing language called Berry.

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