The complete guide to schemas

Hello and welcome back to the channel how to open a nursery.  In today’s video you are going to learn about schemas.  What schemas are, the different types of schemas and the role of both the adult and the environment to support schemas.

Whether you are a parent, childcare professional or both, understanding schemas is important to best supporting children during the play and development.

I’ve studied schemas extensively and I love talking about it. And by the end of this video  whether you are completely new to what are schemas or you’ve learnt lots about it before.  You should leave here having a better understanding of it and be able to use the knowledge you have gained to better support your children.

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So, firstly

What are schemas?

Simply put, schemas are behaviours that children may display when they are exploring the world and trying to find out how things work.

Children have a very strong drive to repeat actions, moving things from one place to another, covering things up, putting things into containers, moving in circles and throwing things – these actions can be observed running through their play.

Schemas vary from child to child; some children will demonstrate a variety of schemas during their play whereas others will display much less.

So, how can we support our children?

Role of an adult?

Your role is crucial.

Children will benefit from adults who observe, are responsive and are led by children’s actions and creativity.

It is important to allow your children to be fully engrossed in their play without interruptions.  If you see your child absorbed in a schema, it is your role to take a step back and try not to impose your ideas or thinking on your child or children too soon.

Being active learners requires children to explore by themselves.

It is important for you, either as a parent or practitioner, to be good at observing your children in play so that you can identify and understand the schemas your children are displaying.

Now, at this point you may be wondering what schemas should you be identifying.

Well, there are numerous.

Literally numerous.

Though, the consensus amongst theorist is that there are eight schemas that are more common for children to display.

Though, as previously alluded to, some children may never appear to demonstrate schemas in their play, whereas others may show one schema predominantly for long periods and others may show multiple at one time changing between them.

What is important is being able to identify what is being shown so that you can know how to support that play.

Different types of schemas?

So, the different types of schemas.

Firstly, Connecting.

This involves children joining things together, connecting objects, opening and closing things.

Children will find resources like string to tie things up or they staple paper together. They may tie string to crates to drag them around.  They will work at the woodwork bench with the hammer, nails and wood connecting pieces together.

Having resources like train tracks is great to support this.   Children displaying this schema will enjoy taking things apart and putting things together, for example, investigating how to take the wheels off toy cars.  Water play will offer children the opportunity to practise connecting pipes and guttering with creative experiences providing opportunities to stick, staple, tie, cut and tear.

Enclosing

This involves containing things, creating borders around objects or themselves.

An example of how children may use this in their play is be constructing fences and barricades to enclose animals or themselves.  They may build train track and put animals in the centre or put borers around their artwork.

Children may also enjoy tents, tunnels, dens and climbing into a cardboard box.

One thing you should think about is whether your indoor and outdoor environment has resources to support this type of play.

Enveloping

Enveloping involves covering objects or themselves and hiding things in discrete places.

They will enjoy actively filling and emptying various containers with natural materials and other objects.  Becoming deeply involved in exploring how they and items can be covered with materials. Your child may bury items in the sand and wrap up toys using blankets or paper.  Children will spend time folding up paper and their notes into a tiny size to fit in their pocket.

To support this, it’s important to have open-ended resources to support children in enveloping.

Orientation

With orientation your child will enjoy experimenting with different viewpoints like hanging upside down.  They may turn things around, look at things from under or on top of a table.  They may bend over and look backwards through their legs. 

When demonstrating this schema your child may experiment by seeing things from different views, using cardboard tubes, binoculars or a magnifying glass to look through.

Children displaying this schema may find it difficult remaining still.

To support this schema, help your child or children to identify and manage risks, for example if they wish to climb onto objects, and think about how flexible your daily routine is.

Positioning

Children demonstrating the positioning schema will enjoy arranging or lining up objects or themselves in a particular way.

Providing resources that allow children to do this will aid this.  So, have resources that are similar, like a selection of cars or a selection of trains.

Trajectory

This was one of the first schemas observed in children and involves moving objects by throwing, dropping or rolling.  It can also involve moving one’s own body.

Your child may repeatedly throw their food, climb and jump off things or kick randomly or kick objects.

Children are experimenting with space and how movements occur.

A common thing in slightly older children (toddlers and over) is a fascination with running water.

As they get even older, they may explore the use of lines and shapes within their drawings and mark making.

Transporting

 As the name suggests, here your child will enjoy repeatedly moving resources around from one place to another.  This could be in their pockets, hands or bags.  It can also involve transporting themselves or others.

Children displaying this schema may be seen as difficult to settle or show difficulty staying at one activity long enough to participate.

Having lots of physical outdoor activities will help support this schema.

Rotation

This involves showing an interest in things that spin, drawing circles or spinning themselves.

They may turn taps on and off, winding and unwinding strings or playing with hoops.  Your child may enjoy watching your washing machine spin or enjoy rolling on the floor.

Resources like wheels, lids will help support this schema.

But, those are the eight main types of schemas.  You may have listened to them and recognised that this is something that your child or children do.  Understanding the rationale behind it should help you to support your child and provide activities to allow them to explore these schemas.

Role of the environment?

The environment plays an important role in supporting schemas.

Your child or children need to feel supported within a nurturing environment, this gives them the confidence to explore their thoughts and ideas.  They learn through repetition, making mistakes and trying again.  This gives them ownership of their learning in order to make connections and develop as learners.

Play spaces need to be exciting, inventive and inspiring with lots of opportunities giving children ownership of the experience.

The quality of the learning environment is crucial in providing the potential for children’s creativity and allowing them to confidently follow their own particular interests.

Conclusion

All this should give you a basic understanding of schemas, and help you to better support your children.

To help further support you in your understanding of schemas I have created a schemas poster which you can download using the link in description and in the comments.  It comes in black and white and you can get a hard copy or just get the download version.

This is great if you run a setting or just for yourself to refer back to.

So, get yours now.

Before you go, I wanted to thank you for watching.  I hope you have all gained some knowledge to better support your children’s play and development.

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God Bless.