Note
Finally, some real hardware! This is truly the Hello World of the Internet of Things, but it is a great place to get started if you've never worked with circuits and sensors. Some basic electronics knowledge is quite helpful here. For resistor color codes, there is a great chart and calculator available on Digi-Key (http://www.digikey.com/en/resources/conversion-calculators/conversion-calculator-resistor-color-code-4-band). To understand polarity, which is important for working with diodes and capacitors, Sparkfun has a great tutorial, available here: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/polarity
Here is where you will need some real hardware. I recommend using a breadboard and Raspberry Pi Cobbler to make prototyping fast and easy; soldering each recipe will definitely take a long time.
There are a ton of great starter kits available from places such as Adafruit that give you a nice variety of things...