‘Why does my child play like that?’ Play schemas.

In my job I get the amazing privilege of not only working with children but spending time with the parents too. Naturally parents have a lot of questions and one of the main questions I’ve had recently is “why does my child play like that?”

It was a question I asked a lot when my son was little. I would spend ages setting up nice play activities, then he would come along and just swipe everything off the table. So yes it was a question I would sometimes ask with tears in my eyes. But then I read about Play Schemas and all became a bit clearer and a tiny bit less frustrating. My son was exploring the trajectory play schema.

A play schema is a pattern of play or play behaviour that children go through when they are exploring the world. Through their pattern of play they establish how the world looks and how it works. Research has shown that there are 8 main play schemas.
1. Connecting
2. Orientation
3. Transporting
4. Trajectory
5. Positioning
6. Enveloping
7. Enclosing
8. Rotation
I’ll explain each one as we go along, but the joy of understanding what schema your child is currently exploring means you can expand on the play and explore different elements of the schema, but you can know that eventually (possibly) it will pass.

So what do they each mean and what can you do to increase the fun?

Connecting
The connecting schema is your child’s way of working out how things come together and come apart. Your child may love putting train tracks together (and taking them apart) or building towers and knocking them down.

Increase the fun:
– By dancing together and linking arms.

– Cut strips of masking tape and stick plastic animals to a table or flat work surface – let your child peel off the masking tape to rescue the animals.

– Thread beads or pasta onto pipe cleaners.

Orientation
Your child is trying to experience the world from a different angle or viewpoint. This is useful to support their physical play.

Increase the fun:
– Lots of different physical activities such as climbing, running, running down hills and jumping.

– Play from different view points – lay on the floor whilst playing with cars or stand up at a table whilst playing with small world toys.

Transporting
Very simply put, moving things from A – B.

Increase the fun
– They may like playing with cars, but do different activities with cars, like attach pens on the backs of cars and then move them around big bits of paper and see what patterns they make or stick labels on cars and write on numbers or letters. Then write the same numbers or letters on a big piece of paper and see if they can match them up.

– Have lots of objects around that you can use to transport things. Such as play buggies, wheelbarrows, trollies, bags or baskets.

– Water play with lots of cups – moving water from one cup to another.

– Or a tray of porridge oats with scoops and pots.

Trajectory
This schema explores the movement of an object. Your child may drop food from their high chair or scatter their toys. These are mini experiments watching how long something takes to travel or how does it fall, where will it land?

Increase the fun
You may not feel like this schema is much fun, as it doesn’t feel very productive. But there are ways to embrace the trajectory schema.

– Play tag

– Roll cars down a ramp

– Push cotton reels off a table into a bucket

– Attach string to two chairs and thread a straw onto the string. Attach different objects to the string and push them along.

Positioning
Have you watched your child line up their toys really carefully. This is the first steps to organising and creating patterns.

Increase the fun
– Get different objects to line up or sort – go for a walk in the woods and collect acorns or pine cones.

– Threading

– For older ones – have a go at sewing

– Games like Jenga

Enveloping and Enclosing
These two schemas are closely linked. It is where the children like to envelope themselves or objects in boxes or materials. Do your keys or credit cards go missing regularly, most probably your child is exploring the enclosing schema.

Increase the fun
– Den building

– Make blankets and pieces of fabric available for wrapping themselves up or wrapping toys up.

– Play tunnels for the children to crawl through or make tunnels for toy cars to go through or you can buy rabbit tunnels from pet shops for cars or small world toys to go in.

Rotation
Children exploring this schema love watching things that spin or twist. But also they may like themselves to spin.

Increase the fun
– Play with hoops

– Find a large space and do lots of spinning

– Get round baking tins and drop them (maybe don’t us your favourite tin) and watch them spin when they land.

– Playing with toys that have wheels

– Attach some string to the underside of a table and attach a bracelet or a hoop of some sort and let your child enjoy spinning the hoop.

Your children may be interested in one or two schemas at the same time or focussed on one particular schema at a time. Just don’t despair, this is your child’s way of learning through play!

Here is a quick look download with the play schemas and activities you can do to increase the fun!