UNDERSTANDING SCHEMAS PLAY
Have you ever wondered why your little one is continually repeating a certain action? Like moving toys around your home, pulling items out of a box only to put them back in, or dropping food out of the pram or highchair?
Often, we look at these actions as a child being ‘difficult’ (especially after the 8th time you’ve picked up the same toy flung from the pram) but it’s possible that your child is actually engaging in Schematic Play.
We call these specific repeated actions or behaviours ‘Schemas’ and they help children’s brain development and learning as they grow.
Discovered by Psychologist and genetic epistemologist Jean Piaget in the 1920’s, we include Schemas Play in our curriculum because we know that working with Schemas helps us build learning around children's understanding of their world, effectively scaffolding upon previous learning to expand their concepts and ideas.
By nature, Schemas repeat – children are fascinated, engaged and passionate about what they are learning. They are in ‘the zone’ or ‘flow’ when using their Schemas.
What is Schemas and Schematic Play?
Schemas are like a set of instructions – a defined pattern of repeated behaviour like making a sandwich – where you are using a Schemas to do it; a mental model you’ve created through a process of trial and error to find the best and most efficient way of completing your task.
Schemas Play in children allows them to explore and express these developing ideas (or urges) and importantly practice them through their play and construct meaning until they have mastered the understanding of the Schema.
Being aware of Schemas helps parents and educators to differentiate between ‘bad behaviour’ vs ‘natural urges’ which helps to move past the belief that a child is just being ‘difficult’- in fact they suggest a healthy child.
“ Play Schemas are NATURAL, UNCONTROLLABLE, and totally NECESSARY urges that ALL children have at some point or another.”
When and how do Schemas appear?
We see Schemas Play occur most often in Toddlers and young children, however, even as adults, Schemas Play is something we can indulge in from time to time as we encounter something for the first time – this is especially true for anyone that has pieced together lots of IKEA furniture!
The different types of Schema Play
There are 7 types of Schemas Play. Usually, one Schemas is quite strong and, as it’s mastered, will be replaced by another - what seemed like an obsession at one stage is quickly forgotten once the concept has been mastered. Children can also practice multiple Schemas at once.
Ideas for play include:
Chasing games like tag
Blowing, chasing, and catching bubbles
Pushing a toy off the table and seeing where it lands
Rolling cars down a ramp
Water play with funnels
Playing on swings and trees
Playing with scarves and ribbons on windy days
Trajectory Schemas
This is one of the earliest Schemas observed in Babies. They’re fascinated with how objects move through the air. We have all seen children throw objects or food from their pram or highchair. Whilst this can be frustrating at times, it’s important to understand that often they are engaging in important scientific experiments. By dropping food from their highchair, they are trying to understand whether it will smash, or slop, how long it will take to reach the ground and how they can manipulate its trajectory. These early attempts at understanding trajectory develop into the more familiar skills of throwing, catching, and kicking, and eventually to driving, tennis and so many more.
Ideas for play include:
Gather twigs, leaves, and sticks while out in the garden, sorting and transporting them home using buckets, boxes, bags, and wheeled toys
Make transporting items easily available for children such as trolleys, walkers, baskets, and bags
Unpacking the shopping and transporting items where they need to go (it’s a win win for everyone!)
Transporting Schemas
Children will enjoy repeatedly moving toys and resources from one place to another, carrying many items at a time using their hands, pockets, trolleys, or baskets. Transporting is a very rewarding activity for children as they enjoy seeing something happen as a result of their own hard work and completing a task.
Ideas for play include:
Making jewellery by threading pasta onto a string
Creating models using differing recycled materials
Playing with Duplo, Lego or wooden blocks to construct different items
Pegging up cards, photographs or washing
Any arts and crafts activities that involve glue and sticking pieces together – such as making paper chains
Connecting Schemas
Children will try to connect and disconnect items to understand how certain things come together and others fall apart – such as building a tower and knocking it over. They will experiment with different items to formulate ideas of strength and magnetic force, stickiness, and slippiness.
Ideas for play include:
Playing with tents, tunnels, and cardboard boxes
Playing hide and seek
Making dens with blankets, or fallen branches with leaves, logs, and string if outside
Create a farm using animals and different types of fencing fencing
Boxes are a great tool for Enclosing Schemas
Enclosing Schemas
The enclosing schema is about creating boundaries. Children may construct fences and barricades to enclose toy animals or themselves. They will hide in boxes or may build a train track and put toy animals in the centre. “Eventually, enclosing leads to letter-formation. The balled fist that first holds a crayon, making endless spirals on the page eventually becomes the dextrous hand drawing circles for 'o' and 'p' and 'd'. It's also central to drawing faces and bodies. Leave a gap and there's a space for the colouring-in to leak out” says Alexis Ralphs of One Hundred Toys.
Ideas for play include:
Exploring toys with wheels and cogs
Using different sized balls for throwing, catching, and kicking
Playing with rattles, windmills, roundabouts and spinning toys
Connecting nuts and bolts
Mixing and whisking cake ingredients
Rotational Schemas
Children will be fascinated by anything that twirls, spins, twists, or rolls. They may enjoy turning taps on and off, winding, and unwinding string, and playing with hoops or screwdrivers. They’ll be fascinated with the physical experience of twirling and twisting their body, spinning around on the spot, rolling themselves down a hill, playing ring-a-ring-a-Rosie or riding their bike in a circle. This exploration of circular rotation lays the foundations for everything from rotational symmetry in mathematics and rotating magnetic fields in secondary school science, to dancing at the Graduation disco or playing pass the parcel at a party.
Ideas for play include:
- Swaddle dolls and teddies with blankets
- Wrap presents
- Play with a shape sorter
- Dress up with scarves, hats, and bits of material
- Make sock puppets
Enveloping Schemas
Not to be confused with Connecting Schemas, Enveloping Schemas sees children enjoying covering and hiding items, including themselves. They’ll enjoy dressing up with lots of layers, wrapping up dolls, creating homes for their toys or filling, and emptying bags and containers with different objects. This is also when children will ‘post’ a lot of items to understand what happens when they wrap or hide objects. It’s also a time that many Parents will lose items!
Orientational Schema
Ideas for play include:
- Jumping on Mum or Dad’s shoulders to see the world from up high
- Lie flat on the floor and play with toy cars
- Climb trees or climbing frames
- Play I Spy and go on treasure hunts
- Walk along walls
Children like to turn objects and themselves around and upside down, to get a different viewpoint. They may bend over and look at the world backwards through their legs, lie along the top of the couch, swing upside down from the monkey bars or sit the wrong way in a trolley. It’s all about finding different heights and positions. This can also extend to seeing things from a different view when using cardboard tubes, binoculars, or a magnifying glass.
Schemas Play can be a lot of fun when you know what you’re looking for. If you have any questions about Schemas Play, or how we encourage it as part of our daily program, please get in touch!