Exploring play schemas with CONNETIX!
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Children’s brains are like “meaning making machines”, they are always looking to organise information and understand the world around them. When you observe a child in play, you may notice that they engage in lots of repetitive behaviours or seem to be interested in doing similar things with different objects over-and-over again.
If you’ve noticed this, welcome to the world of schemas. A schema is a way of organising and interpreting information from the world around you, children create these through play. Generally speaking, children will display schema exploration through repetitive behaviours as they explore, learn and make sense of the world. These schemas reflect the patterns in how children interact with their environment.
Understanding these schemas helps parents and educators support children’s cognitive and motor skill development in a way that aligns with their interests and natural urges. When parents and educators understand schema play it offers a window into a child’s world which boosts connection and reduces frustration (particularly common with children who love to throw).
There are several types of play schemas, and here I will discuss some of the most common ones, signs that your child may be exploring this particular schema and how you can use CONNETIX to further enhance schematic understanding.
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Children love moving objects from one place to another. Your child may be exploring this schema if they are filling bags of ‘special things’ and taking them everywhere, filling laundry baskets or pillowcases and moving them around the house.
CONNETIX offer versatility that encourages creativity. Whether children are engaged in stacking, building or experimenting with shapes and balance, these tiles are adaptable to support the development of any play schema.
Through schema-aligned activities, children build not only physical structures but also a stronger understanding of concepts like cause and effect, balance and spatial reasoning.
The versatility of CONNETIX fosters teamwork among children, allowing them to work together to build complex structures, which enhances social development.
Sarah Bolitho is a master’s qualified Child Play Therapist and Certified Practicing Counsellor who specialises in working with children under nine years old and their families. Sarah owns and practices in a private clinic in Perth, Western Australia offering children and families individual and family therapy to improve psychosocial and emotional wellness, strengthen relationships and heal from adversity. Sarah also has an online community at @securefoundations where she provides insights and awareness to boost parental confidence and knowledge. For the parents that want to go deeper into understanding themselves, their children and their relationships she hosts the parenting on purpose club, a membership for growth minded parents to find their inner wisdom.
This schema is about enclosing spaces or themselves. You may notice children putting everything into boxes, building cubbies, covering themselves in stickers or hiding under towels.
Using CONNETIX, children can create enclosed spaces like boxes, car parks, schools or vets, houses, a cot for a doll, a trailer, etc. You could offer additional resources such as silks, hankies or blankies to further the enclosing and enveloping. Alternatively, you could offer other resources to hide in the CONNETIX such as coloured rice, balls or peg people.
In this schema, children are fascinated by things that spin and rotate. Your children might be exploring this schema if they are into things with wheels, cogs and gears.
The new CONNETIX road expansion pack is an amazing resource for children exploring rotation. The vehicle expansion could be used as well as other matchbox toy cars to explore differences in size, speed and distance. Jarmila Smejkalova has also written a fantastic blog on how to create a chair ride carousel that could also be offered to explore this schema.
Children exploring the positioning schema often like to place items in specific ways, like arranging tiles in a line or stack. You may notice children lining items up in a row, sorting things in size, height or colour order. CONNETIX are perfect for creating symmetrical or organised designs, enhancing spatial awareness as well as understanding similarities and differences.
The trajectory schema supports children to figure out how things move through space, including themselves and other things around them. Examples of this in everyday life are jumping in puddles and watching water move, throwing things over the highchair or out of the pram, rolling and throwing balls, catching and watching bubbles, swinging and rolling, or twirling ribbons. The CONNETIX ball runs are the perfect play space addition to figure out how things move and what structures support speed, height and movement.
Knowing your child’s preferred schema helps you introduce activities and toys, like CONNETIX, that match their developmental needs. It can also help you to make sense of some tricky behaviours and target alternative ways to develop understanding. For example, a child that throws food off the highchair may be exploring the trajectory schema. They learn that when they throw spaghetti it goes ‘SPLAT’, so they think everything that falls goes SPLAT. Then they throw peas and peas roll, then they throw a ping pong ball and it bounces. So, whilst it may look like they are being messy and destructive, they’re actually having to update their mental framework consistently from “everything I throw goes splat” to “things that are wet and squishy splat” and “things that are round and light bounce” and “things that are round and heavy bounce a little”.
When children engage in activities aligned with their schemas, they are able to update their mental frameworks, meaning that they are more able to make accurate predictions around what will happen. They are better able to meet behavioural expectations and can learn about the world with greater depth.
CONNETIX offer a new way to approach repetitive behaviours in a creative context. When children are provided the space and resources to play in almost any way that they choose, they will innately seek out the skills that they are wanting to learn. Schematic play is naturally curious and the repetitiveness is an uncontrollable urge, allowing the child to choose how they play, naturally creates opportunities to figure out their world.
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