Curriculum guide and teaching notes

---
curriculum_id: "a_day_without_screens"
name: "A Day Without Screens"
slug: "a-day-without-screens"
code_prefix: "SCFR"
strand_line: "CHOOSING WHAT TO DO"
outcome_sentence: "By the end of this curriculum a child can fill a whole day from a list of things to do instead, chosen by her."
scope_boundary: "Does not cover screen time advice, technology curricula, rules for parents."
description: "A ten week unit that gives a child a set of sixteen things she can do and teaches her to choose from them without being told. She starts by doing the card she is handed and finishes by laying out a row of cards for a whole day in her own order. The word screen is never said to the children. This unit gives no advice about devices and sets no rules for families."
tradition: none
non_affiliation: "Empathy Global is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to any external organisation, programme or publisher."
family: "Home and Parents"
shape: MINI
age_band: "around 2 to around 6"
levels: [{level_id: L1, level_name: "All ages together", age_line: "around 2 to around 6"}]
terms: 1
weeks_per_term: 10
lessons: 10
blocks_per_week: 2
minutes_per_block: 20
weekly_minutes: 40
weekly_minutes_min: 40
weekly_minutes_max: 50
space: "One mat, or one swept square of floor the size of a door, in the same place every week."
season_dependent: false
weeks_reorderable: false
weeks_reorderable_reason: "The spread widens from one card to sixteen across the ten weeks and each week depends on the count before it."
materials_philosophy: "Sixteen cards cut from any card or carton, each larger than a hand and far too large to swallow, plus the ordinary things the room already holds, and nothing at all is bought for this curriculum."
domain_tags: [{tag: PSED, meaning: "Personal, social and emotional development"}, {tag: PD, meaning: "Physical development"}, {tag: CL, meaning: "Communication and language"}, {tag: EAD, meaning: "Expressive arts and design"}]
headings: {teacher_note: "Before the mat goes down", standing_rules: "How the mat always runs", session: "This week on the mat", take_home: "One line home", signs: "You will know it is working when"}
asset_title: "The Things To Do Cards"
asset_file: "a_day_without_screens_things_to_do_cards.md"
access: free
published: false
version: 1.0
date: "2026-09-04"
standing_rules_block: |
  1. One adult stays with the mat while cards are out. The children carry their cards away from the mat and come back to it, so the adult stays where the cards are and not where the children go.
  2. Water sits in a cup or a jug and never in anything deeper than a cup. A dry cloth stays on the floor beside any card that uses water. A spill is dried before the next child crosses that floor.
  3. Hands are washed after any card that uses water, and after sweeping.
  4. Every card is larger than a hand. Every object a card asks for is larger than a fist. Nothing smaller comes onto the mat, whatever the card says.
  5. If something appears on the mat or on the floor that is not on the card list, stop, move the children back one full step, touch nothing, and deal with it alone.
  6. A child who takes no card stays on the mat. She is not handed one and she is not asked again. She is counted as present and the mat carries on around her.
  7. A child who takes the same card every week keeps taking it. Nothing is said about it.
  8. A card with no materials in this room is run in its minimum version, which is written on the card. The minimum version is not a lesser version.
  9. The word screen is not said to the children in any session of this curriculum, and no child is asked what she does at home.
term_arc_note: "This is a MINI of one term. The four arc lines below are four phases across the ten weeks, not four terms."
term_arc:
  - "Weeks 1 to 3. The cards exist and each one is a thing she can start. She does the card she is given, then the card she is given comes back."
  - "Weeks 4 to 6. The choosing moves from the adult's hand to the mat and widens from two cards to six, and the card she used goes back so it stays available."
  - "Weeks 7 to 8. She closes the gap between one finished card and the next, first by returning alone and then by setting an order of two before she begins."
  - "Weeks 9 to 10. The plan leaves her hands and enters her speech, and by week ten she lays and names a whole row of her own."
boundary_rules:
  - "The word screen is never said to a child in any lesson, any SAY line, any staging line or any card."
  - "No lesson compares a card to a screen, tells a child that a screen is worse, or asks a child what she does at home."
  - "No lesson gives a parent a rule, a limit, a number of hours or any advice about devices."
  - "The take home line names what the child did and one thing to try, never what to stop."
---