Two Before You Start

Original lesson metadata

code: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK8
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: 8
title: "Two Before You Start"
aim: "Takes two cards before starting and does both in the order she set."
blocks_this_week: 2
minutes_per_block: 20
weekly_minutes: 40
blocks: [{n: 1, title: "All Sixteen Out", minutes: 20}, {n: 2, title: "Two In Her Order", minutes: 20}]
domains: [PSED, PD]
objectives: [{domain: PSED, text: "Holds two cards and lays them in an order before starting."}, {domain: PD, text: "Completes both cards in the order she laid them."}]
materials: ["Things To Do cards 1 to 16", "new this week: Two Hands Full, Put It Back", "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: "Lay her two cards down for her in the order she picked them up and leave them there.", older: "Ask her to lay three rather than two and hold the order across all three."}
watching_for: "Whether the order she does them in is the order she laid them."
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 8 · 2 × 20 minutes


DOMAINS: PSED, PD
CODE: EMP-SCFR-L1-T1-WK8
DAY & DATE:

Objectives

PSED Holds two cards and lays them in an order before starting.
PD Completes both cards in the order she laid them.

Before the mat goes down

The failure this week is the second card getting done first. She will hold two cards, put one on top of the other, walk away, and do whichever one is facing her when she stops walking. That is not disorder, it is a three year old holding two things with no way to remember which was first.

Solve it with the floor rather than with her memory. She lays both cards down in a line before she leaves the mat, first one nearest the door. The line stays on the mat while she works and she comes back to it. Chalk two boxes on the mat if the cards slide.

Sixteen cards is a lot of card on one mat. Lay them in four rows of four with a hand width between rows. Two of them will walk across the middle of the spread rather than round it and cards will go under feet. Put the spread against the wall side so there is only one way in.

You are not teaching sequencing. You are teaching that a decision made a minute ago still holds when the room has changed, and that is the thing which lets a child fill an afternoon rather than react to it.

You will expect the strong choosers to find this easy. It goes the other way. The child who chooses fast will grab two without looking and then have no order in her head. The slow chooser already has an order, because she built it while she was deciding.

One child will take two copies of the same card if you have cut spares. Let her. She has made an order of two identical things and the order still holds, which is the whole skill.

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. All sixteen lie face up. She takes two before she starts and does both in the order she set.

All Sixteen Out · 20 minutes

AIM: Holds two cards at once and puts one in front of the other.

Lay all sixteen in four rows of four with a hand width between rows, against the wall side of the mat so there is one way in. Stand at the open side. Let two children in at a time and no more. When a child has two cards in her hands, put your finger on the mat floor to show where the pair goes down. The block ends when every child has two cards laid in a line in front of her.

SAY: "Two cards this time. One, then the other. Both in your hands."

Two In Her Order · 20 minutes

AIM: Does the two cards in the order she set, not the order she happens to reach.

Move away from the mat and stand where you can see both the mat and the room. When a child finishes her first card, do nothing. She will come back to her line herself because her second card is lying on it. If she picks up the wrong one, leave it. The block ends when the mat is clear of laid pairs.

SAY: "This one first. Then this one. That is your order."

If you have more time

Ask a child to lay two cards for another child and let that child do them in the order given. Slots at the end of block two, ten minutes.

One line home

Your child decided the order of two things before she started either. Ask her which came first.

If you are asked why: a plan she made a minute ago is a plan she can keep.

You will know it is working when

Both cards are down on the mat before she leaves it. She comes back to her own pair rather than to the spread. The order she does them in is the order she laid them.

Notes: