What an activity record is made of, and the axes along which the thirteen core activities actually differ. Read off the records, not off theory.
taxonomy.md.There is one genuine branch, and it is not a hierarchy of activities: what kind of record this is, which says only which of the other questions stop applying. Everything after it varies independently.
basis needs. Two of the three deliberately blank
basis values in the corpus name this question as the reason they are
blank: whether children keep the lens, and whether a balloon car goes home.look · make · make, then test
The three make, then test activities are the three that were confused with each other for a fortnight. Build it, then run it. A test needs a rig and a run of floor, which is the question Junk Modelling Vehicles raises and cannot answer.
keeps it · left behind
The only record stating one is Junk Modelling, which is a materials area, and the thing taken home is built at the activity next door. The kind gate is what catches that.
open · adults only · induction
The strictest gate on the activity, not every tool on the table. The induction travels with the glue gun to two other stations, which is only visible if each activity records its own gate.
none · mains
Wind Tunnel has a fan and a fan repair kit, and nothing in its record or its 28 material rows mentions a socket. Junk Modelling lists a drill and glue guns and says nothing either.
nothing · an example · a rig
Read off the make rows rather than the prose. A rig is built once,
carried, repaired and stored. All 150 recorded minutes in the corpus sit on one rig and its example
board.
Settled, DECISIONS.md, 18 August 2026: the activity
says what it is, the event says how it is deployed. It is not restated here. The event side is a
separate document, in event-taxonomy/.
One record read by a different public is a render. Four are named: a teacher
page, an Instagram post, a printable activity card for families, and a description for children's
settings. Only the teacher page has published examples, three of them, and one is
Nature's Engineers, which is also a record in core-activities/. That is a
direct before and after of one activity for two readers.
| Render | Addresses | What it adds | Filter or rewrite |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teacher page published, 3 activities | A teacher, explicitly not a STEAM specialist | Key stage, curriculum links, skills and competencies, three learning questions, four learning outcomes, the iOi methodology, and a subject expansion | Both. Materials and the challenge lift straight out; the techniques need a length pass; everything above them is new writing |
| Activity page internal, activity.html | Whoever picks it, and whoever runs it | Nothing. It is the record laid out | Filter throughout |
| Print pack build-print-pack.py | A child at the stall | Child-facing wording that exists nowhere upstream | Both. It extracts its structure by regex and its sentences are hand-drafted |
None of the three published pages has a safety section, and Junk Bots runs motors and batteries. Nor do they carry duration, group size or assessment.
All three pages carry KS2 and KS3. No record in core-activities/
carries a key stage, an age band or anything equivalent.
The record runs what it is, method, safety, notes. The teacher page runs hook, curriculum, questions, outcomes, pedagogy, subject, and puts what to do last, under Workshop Essentials.
| Section | Who reads it | Today |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Whoever picks activities, and a facilitator arriving cold | 13 of 13 keep, required |
| Method | The facilitator on the day | 4 of 13 keep, required |
| Safety | The facilitator, and later whoever writes the risk assessment | 7 of 13 keep, in two shapes |
| Notes | Whoever prepares it, and whoever reads it six months later | 13 of 13 keep, required |
| Setup (proposed) | Whoever sets up before children arrive | three records smuggle it into Method |
| For children | A family at home | 0 of 13 retire, the copy lives in a build script |
| Background | Whoever picks it, and the child-facing copy | 0 of 13 retire, the research lives in research/ |
| Field | Who reads it | Today |
|---|---|---|
| title | Everything | 13 of 13 |
| tags | Whoever is looking for an activity that fits a brief | 11 of 13 free words |
| linked | A reader following a thread | 8 of 13 carries three different relations |
| themes | Whoever is looking | 6 of 13 free words |
| programmes | Whoever is looking | 3 of 13 |
| type | The event | 1 of 13 mini make or mega make, which fits 10 of the 13 |
| duration | The event's timetable | 1 of 13 |
| requires | The event, early | 0 of 13 the field exists and is in no record |
| kind (proposed) | The event, and every other field | answerable today for 12 of 13 |
| takeaway (proposed) | The calculator, through basis | stated by 2 of 13 |
| power (proposed) | The venue, early | tags say it in two opposite directions |
| space (proposed) | Whoever lays out the room | three records ask for it and none has a field |
| ages (proposed) | Safety planning | design intent, not a material variant |
| state (proposed) | Anyone at risk of reading a placeholder as a plan | five records spend a paragraph on it |
All nine are proposed on 19 August 2026 and none is acted on. Each is grounded in
something in the corpus. The evidence in full is in taxonomy.md §6.
The validator checks shape: the column set, the spelling of closed values, no merged cells. The calculator checks completeness, refuses, and names the row and file.
kind is activity, materials area or service station, and it is asked
of every record. scale, mini or mega make, is asked only where the kind
is an activity.
What a child leaves with decides the basis, so it needs a field. It is a different question from whether one of iOi's own reusable objects comes back, which is settled and belongs to the event.
It is on 56 rows across two activity files, and the materials template already assigns it to the event. Where it goes instead is an event question.
Two CSVs invented it and a third render hard-codes the same information, because the file has nowhere for it. The rule to amend: a column exists if the calculator or a render reads it.
One word, named, written or delivered. The project rule that a record written before its first delivery is a proposal becomes checkable rather than tonal.
Fill requires with power and space: none or a count of sockets; a
table, a table and a run of floor, or a structure that occupies a room. It also holds a dependency on
kit iOi does not own.
The three lines stay as the floor. A hazard table, with hazard, who it reaches and what we do, is added where a hazard needs a mitigation.
Derive them. Keep hand-written tags for characteristics such as no power and fine motor.
Reported under the standing job, not resolved. All open. No word was silently coined or normalised in producing this document.
core-activities/, so only one of the three published
activities can be compared at all.