What Comes Next

Original lesson metadata

code: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK7
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: 7
title: "What Comes Next"
aim: "Finishes one card, returns to the mat alone, and takes a second."
blocks_this_week: 2
minutes_per_block: 20
weekly_minutes: 40
blocks: [{n: 1, title: "Finish And Return", minutes: 20}, {n: 2, title: "The Second Card", minutes: 20}]
domains: [PSED, CL, PD]
objectives: [{domain: PSED, text: "Comes back to the mat on her own when a card is finished."}, {domain: CL, text: "Reaches for or asks for a second card without prompting."}, {domain: PD, text: "Completes two separate physical tasks in one session."}]
materials: ["Things To Do cards 1 to 14", "new this week: Build It Up, Show Me Where", "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 her name and hold up one card so there is something visible to walk towards.", older: "Ask her to fetch a child who has finished and is still standing."}
watching_for: "Whether she turns towards the mat or towards the noise."
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 7 · 2 × 20 minutes


DOMAINS: PSED, CL, PD
CODE: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK7
DAY & DATE:

Objectives

PSED Comes back to the mat on her own when a card is finished.
CL Reaches for or asks for a second card without prompting.
PD Completes two separate physical tasks in one session.

Before the mat goes down

The whole week is one moment about four seconds long: the card is finished, her hands are empty, and nothing is happening. That is the moment. Everything else this week is scaffolding around it.

You will expect her to come back to the mat because the mat is where the cards are. She will not. She will stand exactly where she finished and look round the room, and if nobody moves she will drift towards whatever is loudest. Coming back is a thing she learns and not a thing she works out.

The failure is you fetching her. The first time she stands there you will want to walk over and lead her back, and if you do it once you will do it every week. Stay at the mat. Say her name once from where you are. She has to make the walk with her own legs or the walk does not exist.

Five of them will come back and take the same card again. That is a second card and it counts. Do not tell her to take a different one. The order she is learning is finish, return, take, and the identity of the second card is not part of it this week.

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. Every card so far lies face up. She takes one, does it, comes back alone, and takes a second.

Finish And Return · 20 minutes

AIM: Comes back to the mat on her own when the first card is finished.

Sit at the mat and stay there for the whole block, whatever happens across the room. When a child finishes and stands still, say her name once at ordinary volume and then look down at the mat. Do not keep looking at her. Count how many come without a second call. The block ends when every child who took a card has come back to the mat with it.

SAY: "When it is finished, come back to me. On your own."

The Second Card · 20 minutes

AIM: Takes a second card straight after the first with no adult in between.

Still at the mat. Have the returned cards laid out face up again before she reaches you, so there is something to take the moment she arrives. Keep the line short and say it while she is still putting the first card down. The block ends when at least half the children have done two cards.

SAY: "Another one. Take it now. Straight on to the next."

If you have more time

Let one child sit at the mat and hand the second card to the returners while you watch. Slots into block two, ten minutes.

One line home

Your child finished one thing and started another without being told. Ask her what came second.

If you are asked why: the gap between two activities is where a day is either filled or lost.

You will know it is working when

She stops, stands, and turns towards the mat rather than towards the noise. She arrives without a second call. She takes another card without asking whether she may. The second card is sometimes the same as the first and that counts.

Notes: