Four To Choose From

Original lesson metadata

code: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK5
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: 5
title: "Four To Choose From"
aim: "Takes one card from four and names it before she starts."
blocks_this_week: 2
minutes_per_block: 20
weekly_minutes: 40
blocks: [{n: 1, title: "Four Across The Mat", minutes: 20}, {n: 2, title: "Say The Name First", minutes: 20}]
domains: [CL, PSED]
objectives: [{domain: CL, text: "Says the name of the card she is holding."}, {domain: PSED, text: "Chooses from four cards laid apart rather than taking the nearest."}]
materials: ["Things To Do cards 1 to 10", "new this week: Line Them Up, Look Out And Say", "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: "Say the name with her at the same time rather than waiting for her to go first.", older: "Ask her to name the card and say what she will need for it before she goes."}
watching_for: "Whether a name comes after her hand has landed."
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 5 · 2 × 20 minutes


DOMAINS: CL, PSED
CODE: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK5
DAY & DATE:

Objectives

CL Says the name of the card she is holding.
PSED Chooses from four cards laid apart rather than taking the nearest.

Before the mat goes down

Four cards, one arm span apart, laid in a line across the mat. Not a stack, not a fan, not a pile. If they touch each other she will lift the whole group in one hand and the choosing has gone.

You will expect naming to be the easy half because she can already say the words. She cannot say them at the moment of choosing. The hand and the mouth do not yet work together at this age and she will pick up a card and go quiet. Ask after her hand has landed, not before.

If you have twenty children and one adult, do not run this as a queue at the mat. Four cards out, four children at the mat at once, one card each, and the rest carry on with whatever they were doing until it is their turn. A queue of sixteen at a mat is fifteen children waiting and one choosing.

You will want to steer her towards a card she has not done. Every teacher wants this. Do not. A child taking the same card for the fourth week is practising it, and the range comes from the cards existing on the mat rather than from you pointing at them.

The failure is the wrong name said confidently. Two of them will name a card that is not the one in their hand, usually the card next to it or the one they did last week. Say the right name once, plainly, and let them carry on. Do not make them say it again.

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. Four cards lie face up on the mat. She takes one and says its name.

Four Across The Mat · 20 minutes

AIM: Chooses from four laid out with space between them rather than from a stack.

Lay four cards in a line across the mat with a full arm span between them so that no two can be lifted in one hand. Stand at one end of the line and not in the middle. Let four children come at once. If two reach for the same card, step back rather than in. The block ends when all four cards have been lifted at least once.

SAY: "Four today. Walk round them. Pick up any one."

Say The Name First · 20 minutes

AIM: Says the name of the card in her hand before she begins it.

Crouch beside whichever child has just lifted a card. Put your hand flat on the floor rather than on the card. Ask for the name after her hand has landed and not before. If nothing comes, wait, then say the name once yourself and move on without asking her to repeat it. The block ends when every card that was lifted has been named by somebody.

SAY: "Tell me its name. Say it out loud. Now begin."

If you have more time

Ask one child to name all four cards on the mat rather than only the one she took. Slots into block two, five minutes.

One line home

Your child said the name of the thing she was about to do. Ask her to say it again at home.

If you are asked why: a thing with a name is a thing she can ask for.

You will know it is working when

The four cards are all lifted at least once across the block. She says a name after her hand has landed. Two children reach for different cards at the same moment without either of them stopping.

Notes: