steam-worksheets - SKILL.md Agent Skill

name: steam-worksheets description: >- Generate print-ready, full-colour A4 STEAM worksheets for an early learner (ages ~4-7, Ontario Kindergarten / WRDSB aligned). Each sheet is one page, ~15 minutes of focused work, with a left binding margin for a ring binder. Use this skill WHENEVER the user wants a worksheet, practice sheet, activity sheet, or printable for a young child — including requests like "make a worksheet for my daughter", "a maths practice page", "some letter tracing", "a counting sheet", "a colouring + puzzle page", "a Level 2 space worksheet", or a daily/weekly pack of practice pages. Trigger even if they don't say the word "worksheet" but clearly want a printable learning activity for a young kid. Handles inputs for level (difficulty), theme, topics, child's name, and number of activities. updated: 2026-06-02

STEAM Worksheets

Generate single-page, full-colour A4 worksheets for an early learner. Every sheet is built from a Python engine that draws all artwork as inline SVG (no emoji font needed — it prints clean in colour), keeps an 18 mm left margin for ring-binder punching, and includes a discreet parent answer key in the footer.

Before you generate — confirm the inputs

Ask the user (or infer from the request) these, then proceed. Don't over-ask; sensible defaults exist for everything except where noted.

Level (difficulty) — 1, 2, or 3. See "Levels" below. Default 2.
Theme — space, animals, indian, or mixed. Default space.
Topics — any of math, literacy, patterns, problemsolving, arts, science. Default math,literacy,patterns,problemsolving (a balanced sheet).
Child's name — personalises the title (e.g. "Asha's Space Worksheet"). Optional; omit for a blank name line.
Number of activities — 3 or 4 (the engine accepts only these values). Default 4 (≈15 min). The 4-activity maximum keeps the sheet on one page.
How many worksheets — generate a pack by calling the engine repeatedly with different seeds/themes.

If the user has set a difficulty preference for their child before, reuse it.

How to generate

The engine lives in scripts/generate.py. Run it from the skill's scripts/ directory with uv run — the script declares its own dependency (weasyprint) via PEP 723 inline metadata, so nothing is installed into the system Python. If uv isn't available, install weasyprint yourself and use python3 instead.

cd <skill>/scripts
uv run generate.py \
  --out "<output folder>/Asha Space L2.pdf" \
  --level 2 --theme space --name Asha \
  --topics math,literacy,patterns,problemsolving \
  --activities 4 --seed 7

Notes:

--seed makes content reproducible. Omit it for fresh content each run; pass a fixed number to regenerate an identical sheet.
Save the PDF directly into the user's worksheets folder, then show it with the file-presentation tool so they can open and print it.
For a pack, loop over seeds (and optionally themes): e.g. five space sheets --seed 1..5, or one per theme.

Each run prints the level/theme/seed used — record the seed if the user might want that exact sheet again.

Levels (difficulty)

The same activity types scale by level, so a child can progress without the sheets changing character. Match the level to the child, not the age.

Level 1 — emerging (typical start of Senior Kindergarten). Counting and number tracing to ~5, single-letter tracing with a key word, simple AB patterns with one blank, a "trace the trail" path, colour-by-number.
Level 2 — developing (confident SK / start of Grade 1). Addition within 10 with picture support, CVC word building (write the missing middle vowel), AAB patterns with two blanks, a real maze with dead ends, colour-by-number.
Level 3 — extending (strong SK / Grade 1). Addition within 20 (abstract, no picture crutch), spell the whole CVC word from a picture, growing patterns, a larger maze.

See references/curriculum.md for how each topic maps to the Ontario Kindergarten program and what "good enough" looks like at each level.

Topics → activities

math — counting & writing (L1) / addition (L2–3)
literacy — letter-of-the-day tracing (L1) / CVC word building (L2–3)
patterns — repeating or growing patterns, increasing blanks by level
problemsolving — trace-the-trail (L1) / maze (L2–3)
arts — colour-by-number scene (space → rocket, animals → fish, indian/mixed → rangoli)
science — "which one is different?" observation/sorting

Pick topics to vary the sheet. A good default mixes one math, one literacy, one thinking puzzle (patterns or problemsolving), and a creative finisher (arts).

Design guarantees (don't break these)

These are baked into the engine and the user relies on them:

A4 with an 18 mm left margin for ring-binder punching.
Full colour, all artwork vector — verify a render shows no empty boxes (missing glyphs). If you ever hand-edit and see .notdef warnings, you've introduced an emoji/character with no font; replace it with an SVG icon.
One page, ~15 minutes, with a parent answer key in the footer. The engine accepts at most 4 activities to keep this guarantee.

Extending the skill

New theme: add an entry to THEMES in scripts/icons.py (palette, icon list, letter words, and a colour scene). The icon list needs at least 3 distinct icons — activities sample up to 3 without replacement.
New icon: add an SVG to _ICONS in scripts/icons.py; it auto-normalises to a square so it sizes consistently in a row.
New activity: add a builder to scripts/activities.py returning {title, hint, body, key} and register it in builder_for.

After any change, regenerate a sheet and eyeball the PDF before delivering.