I got myself a nodemcu (rather 10) on aliexpress, some relay boards, wires, resistors (haven't really needed them yet), some USB chargers, breadboards, LEDs, RFID readers, more wires, more nodemcu's (esp32 by now), more relays, etc, etc. and I just started hacking around with them. You learn quite a lot by having to solve 'how do I turn on this lamp?', 'how do I read RFID chips?'

My own and my neighbours garden lights are controlled by the nodemcu unit that I put together and I am working on a RFID project at the moment. Great fun.