One Card, One Thing

Original lesson metadata

code: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK1
curriculum_id: "a_day_without_screens"
curriculum_name: "A Day Without Screens"
level_id: L1
level_name: "All ages together"
age_line: "around 2 to around 6"
term: 1
week: 1
title: "One Card, One Thing"
aim: "Does the single thing on the card she is handed, from start to finish."
blocks_this_week: 2
minutes_per_block: 20
weekly_minutes: 40
blocks: [{n: 1, title: "Hand It Over", minutes: 20}, {n: 2, title: "One Thing, All The Way", minutes: 20}]
domains: [PSED, PD, CL]
objectives: [{domain: PSED, text: "Takes a card offered to her and keeps hold of it while she crosses the room."}, {domain: PD, text: "Completes the physical task on one card from start to finish without leaving it midway."}, {domain: CL, text: "Looks at the picture on the card before she moves."}]
materials: ["Things To Do cards 1 to 2", "new this week: Pour and Pour, Big Paper", "the things those cards name, or their minimum versions", "one dry cloth on the floor beside any card that uses water"]
space: "One mat, or one swept square of floor the size of a door, in the same place every week."
differentiation: {younger: "Hand her the card and walk the first two steps beside her. Let go of nothing else.", older: "Ask her to fetch the card for a younger child and hand it over herself."}
watching_for: "Whether she looks at the card before her hand closes on it."
resources: []
version: 1.0
date: "2026-09-04"
access: free

A DAY WITHOUT SCREENS · CHOOSING WHAT TO DO

L1 · around 2 to around 6 · TERM 1, WEEK 1 · 2 × 20 minutes


DOMAINS: PSED, PD, CL
CODE: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK1
DAY & DATE:

Objectives

PSED Takes a card offered to her and keeps hold of it while she crosses the room.
PD Completes the physical task on one card from start to finish without leaving it midway.
CL Looks at the picture on the card before she moves.

Before the mat goes down

The mat goes down before the children come in, not while they are watching. Two cards sit on it face up. That is the whole setup and it takes under a minute.

You are not teaching pouring and you are not teaching drawing. You are teaching that a thing on a card is a thing she can start. Everything in the next nine weeks rests on that, and nothing else this week does.

Four of them will do the card and then stand still, holding it, waiting for you to say what comes next. Say nothing. Let the standing happen. The gap after a finished thing is what this whole curriculum is about and this is the first time she meets it.

The card will get wet. Card one uses water and she will put the card down in the puddle. Use card you do not mind losing and cut a second copy of both water cards before you start.

One child will not take the card out of your hand. She will look at it and put her hands behind her back. Leave the card on the mat in front of her and go to the next child. She will pick it up in a week or in five weeks and either is ordinary.

How the mat always runs

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.
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.
Hands are washed after any card that uses water, and after sweeping.
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.
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.
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.
A child who takes the same card every week keeps taking it. Nothing is said about it.
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.
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.

This week on the mat

How the card reaches her this week. The adult hands her one card. There is no choosing this week.

Hand It Over · 20 minutes

AIM: Takes the card the adult holds out and looks at it before moving.

Sit on the floor at the edge of the mat with the two cards face down beside your knee. Call one child at a time by name. Turn one card over, hold it flat on your open palm rather than pinched between two fingers, and wait until she has looked at it before you let her take it. If she takes it without looking, turn her hand over so the picture faces up and wait two seconds. The block ends when every child who wants a card is holding one and has walked away with it.

SAY: "Here. This one is yours. Look at it first. Then go."

One Thing, All The Way · 20 minutes

AIM: Does the one thing on her card from start to finish without stopping in the middle.

Stay at the mat and do not follow. Watch the room from where you are and count how many of them stop in the middle of the card and look up. When one stops, catch her eye and put one finger back down towards her hands. Do not walk over. The block ends when the water is put away and the cards are back on the mat in any order at all.

SAY: "Keep going. All the way to the end. I am here when it is done."

If you have more time

Add a third card to the mat and hand it to any child who finishes early. Slots into block two, five minutes.

One line home

Your child chose nothing this week and did one thing all the way to the end. Ask her what was on her card.

If you are asked why: finishing one thing is what makes a second thing possible.

You will know it is working when

She looks at the card before her hand closes on it. She gets to the end of the thing rather than to the middle. The card is still somewhere in the room at the end of the block.

Notes: