Meaningless Moves or Learning Schemas?
Written by: Savannah Schadegg
Understanding play through the lens of learning schemas provides educators, caregivers, and parents with the knowledge to support young children's natural curiosity and developmental needs. Piaget (1952) first introduced schemas as fundamental cognitive structures that enable children to categorize and process new information. Schemas are repeated patterns of behavior that help children build understanding and make sense of their experiences.
The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) emphasizes that play is not simply a leisure activity but a vital learning component. Play supports problem-solving, executive function, self-regulation, and language development (NAEYC, 2020). Here are a few schemas to watch for in your child and how they are demonstrating development.
Key learning schemas observed in early childhood include:
Trajectory: Dropping toys from a highchair, throwing objects, or finding ramps for a toy car demonstrates a child working to understand cause and effect, problem-solving, and motor skills through grasp and release.
Container: When children fill and empty containers, open and close containers, or attempt to place themselves in cloth bins, or toyboxes they are exploring spatial awareness, motor development, and mathematical thinking.
Rotation: Children enjoy spinning, turning, and rolling themselves and objects. Consider the way children delight in investigating these in all environments. Lifting a child into an airplane motion is often a child’s first experience with physics. Children demonstrate balance and build strength in visual tracking.
Orientation: Children explore the world through a series of perspectives. Consider the progression of experiencing the world through perspectives. We begin with most of our newborn months on our back or stomach. Then we gain the option to move into a sitting position, and beyond that, standing. Once we have mastered these limited positions we develop ways to gain even more perspectives, such as climbing, swinging, or soaring. This offers spatial awareness and cognitive flexibility.
Transporting: When children are working to understand problem-solving, develop coordination, and strengthen motor functioning, they will become interested in carrying objects from one place to another; baby dolls, dump trucks full of rocks, bugs, and even food.
Connecting: Children naturally engage in joining and separating materials such as train tracks, blocks, or puzzles. Children can also explore this concept by connecting materials with string, glue, or tape. This schema lays the groundwork for construction, engineering, and mathematical reasoning. Consider how a child holds hands and hugs peers or adults, this also shares the concept of connecting one body to another. This encourages relationships and strengthens social-emotional development.
References
NAEYC. (2020). Developmentally Appropriate Practice Position Statement. Retrieved from www.naeyc.org
Piaget, J. (1952). The Origins of Intelligence in Children. Norton.