SchemaPlay

Schemes are ‘cognitive structures’. They are like pathways in the children’s brains, supporting them to play with ideas and thoughts, test them out and make links which build upon their knowledge.

Knowing about schemes offers a positive view of children’s actions and enables educators to make sense of what the children are doing.

The trajectory scheme is one of the earliest schemes to develop. Babies can be seen dropping or throwing objects from their highchair or pram. As they get older, they climb and jump in puddles, chase and catch bubbles, use funnels in water and enjoy swinging.

When children are repeatedly move resources around from one place to another they are learning about transporting or transferring. They gather items in their hands, pockets, containers, baskets, buckets, bags and wheeled toys such as trolleys and prams.

Fences, barricades, tents, tunnels and boxes support children in developing the enclosing scheme.

Wheels, cogs, windmills, spinning toys and tyres interest children as they develop the rotational scheme. Turning taps on and off, winding and unwinding string, playing with hoops, twirling, twisting, spinning and rolling are part of this scheme.

Children developing the enveloping scheme are interested in covering and hiding things. They love to hide themselves and objects, dress up, swaddle dolls and wrap things.

The connecting scheme involves putting things together. Threading, tying, gluing and constructing are important at this time.

Schemes are strengthened through active exploration and movement, engagement, thinking and investigation – that is, play. And in free flow play, children are engaged for extended periods of time, helping them to learn in deep and thorough ways.

SchemaPlay introduces educators to 18 schemes that can be seen in children’s play between the ages of 20 and 36 months. These schemes grow and expand from 30-60 months with an additional 6 schemes underpinning the development of literacy and numeracy.

A programme of spaced workshops supports educators to ‘spot the schemes’ the children are developing, audit their environment and ‘seed’ the play with appropriate resources. From this point, educators then plan for progression so that children can apply schemes to new contexts and build schemes and schemas.

Call me to talk about how SchemaPlay can be incorporated more actively in your school or centre! 0409 034 692