Schematic Play and Toddler Development: What does it mean?

Whether you’ve heard of schemas and schematic play or not, the topic forms an essential part of your child’s development. When looking at your toddler’s behaviour, you might wonder if their actions are ‘normal’ or not, especially when they become particularly difficult to manage. Often, behaviour that we might see as unacceptable such as drawing on walls, throwing toys, pouring drinks on the floor is, in fact, perfectly normal – and actually highly beneficial to your child. These behaviours are a form of, you guessed it – schematic play.

At the same time, we don’t want to encourage these exact behaviours, so this article explores how to identify a child learning a ‘schema’, with suggestions for ideal activities for meeting their developmental needs in a way that doesn’t destroy your home!

Schematic play isn’t a type of play in itself; it’s a type of exploration that can take many forms when toddlers are in a particular stage of development. These stages can happen separately, coincide with one another or make an appearance for a time before seemingly fading again. Rest assured, your toddler is busy making important lifelong connections in their brain. Now we delve into the concept of schematic play in toddlers – you might even find an explanation for their frustrating behaviour!

What is Schematic Play?

Schematic play refers to a toddler’s exploration of a ‘schema’. A schema is a pattern of behaviour that children engage in, usually taking shape through play which should be the primary way a toddler learns. During the early years, children have an innate drive to explore and make sense of the world around them – why things behave as they do, how they can interact with their environment and what effect their different actions will have. These concepts are vast, but most can be classified as one of 9 main schemas.

Schematic play involves repetitive actions or behaviours that toddlers use to explore these different notions, gaining foundational skills crucial for their cognitive, emotional and social development. Using these actions, our little ones begin to understand abstract concepts and develop problem-solving skills!

The Nine Main Schemas of Play

The Transporting Schema

This schema sees a child’s fascination with movement. They want to explore ‘journeys’ by moving things around, including themselves – this might be their toys or even other objects they can get their hands on, so toddler parents might often notice their possessions appearing in new places!

Common Behaviours: You might notice your toddler carrying their toys from one place to another. They might like pushing or pulling toys along or loading up trolleys, toy trucks or boxes with objects to move them around.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Vehicle play: Train tracks, roads and cars.

-          Trolleys and buggies: Give your toddler something to fill with objects and push around.

-          Role play: Play ‘delivery’ games such as pretending to be a postman or delivery driver.

-          Racing: Use toys and pull them along in a drag race or set up a mini track to crawl or dash with your toddler!

The Rotation Schema

Children take an interest in how things spin, rotate or curve, from wheels on vehicles to circular or curved lines. Their brains are exploring how things turn around in a given space, and they will demonstrate this in their play or everyday behaviours!

Common Behaviours: Spinning around in circles, twisting their bodies or heads from side to side, and spinning objects are common patterns you might see. They may have a fascination with turning knobs or twisting cogs or dials.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Observation: Point out spinning things your toddler might like, such as the washing machine to wheels on passing traffic.

-          Twirling: you might find your toddler spins themselves around, so you should allow this but try to encourage it safely, i.e. when there are no hard surfaces around. Soft play areas or a playground roundabout are great for testing this skill!

-          Twisting: If you have access to a dedicated toy with cogs or knobs to spin, great! You can also DIY activities like this with bottle lids for your toddler to take on and off – make sure you supervise at all times!

The Enveloping Schema

‘Enveloping’ exploration comes when a child becomes interested in their immediate environment and the capacity of different spaces. They may begin to demonstrate this through covering (enveloping) things – and themselves – in different ways.

Common Behaviours: Children discovering this schema might like to wrap themselves up in blankets. You might find they cover up their toys or seemingly want to ‘ruin’ things by covering them in pen or paint – this may not be intentional destruction, but rather an exploration of the concept of enveloping.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Toy care: Set up ‘beds’ or cots for your little one’s toys with blankets for them to tuck them in.

-          Pockets or envelopes: Use or make paper envelopes and give your child some cards or similar to post into them.

-          Draw some simple pictures for them to scribble, paint or stick paper over, to explore ‘enveloping’ the artwork

The Transforming Schema

One of our favourites! Littles love the concept of cause and effect: ‘If I do x, what will happen?’ and so on. They explore this through the transforming schema, where acting in a certain way causes an outcome of change – in this way, they can see the ‘effects’ of their actions much more clearly.

Common Behaviours: You might notice your child mixing things together that we might think they shouldn’t – all the colours of their play dough, contrasting paints etc. They might break things – not to intentionally disfigure them, but to explore the cause and effect side to their actions, sometimes in an attempt to change the shape or appearance of an object.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Play dough: squishing, snipping, mixing and moulding. Choose a couple of similar colours to play with at once such as pink and purple, or blue and green and only use small amounts. This way, they can explore mixing and colour changing but the outcome will at least be a pleasant, useable colour rather than another shade of brown!

-          DIY paints: use water, cornflour and food colouring to make your own cheap, easily cleanable (yes, even off clothes!) paints that your child can mix together to their heart’s content.

-          Baking: simple recipes such as cereal cakes (cereal + melted chocolate left to set in a cake case) allow your little one to observe transformation in action. From the melting of the chocolate and the stirring together process to the finished result, it’s a great (and delicious) way to get this schema out of their system!

The Connecting Schema

Children demonstrate this schema through joining and separating objects, from sticking things together to building up towers. They are exploring how the things in our world connect with one another through their play and exploration.

Common Behaviours: Building towers, connecting blocks or toys in lines, connecting building blocks or taking them apart. Children might even love making piles of stickers.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Magnetic play: from magnetic tiles to letters on the fridge, access to magnets is a great way for your child to explore connecting, with the added bonus of a STEM activity thrown in for older siblings.

-          Track building: train tracks, road pieces or ball runs are great tasks for a child in this schema.

-          DIY puzzles: If your little one has tired of their normal jigsaws, you can create your own! Simply print or draw their favourite animals, fruits or other simple objects, colour and snip apart for them to reconstruct.

The Enclosing Schema

This schema sees children investigating the concept of defined spaces and might begin to show a fascination with things of all different shapes and sizes.

Common Behaviours: Putting barriers or fences around groups of toys, getting into boxes or cupboards to shut themselves in, trapping or squashing toys into boxes or tight spaces – between sofa cushions is a common one here!

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Posting activities: making a slot in a cardboard box and giving your little one objects to post in, or using purpose-made toys such as coin slots or shape sorters.

-          Size-sorting boxes: take boxes of different sizes- cardboard, Tupperware, anything you have. Add different sizes of toys to a separate pile and watch your child place, push and squeeze the toys into the different containers.

-          Hide and seek: adapt this game for their current level i.e. younger toddlers need to be accompanied. Let them see what interesting nooks they can get into, exploring enclosing at its finest.

-          Den/fort building: Make a fort out of blankets or boxes for them to crawl into. Add toys in to make a novelty play space for the enclosing schema!

The Orientation Schema

Children will start to develop a tendency to want to observe from a variety of perspectives. They might like to climb up high to get a better view or move extremely close to things to examine them.

Common Behaviours: Climbing to look out of windows, dangling upside down off furniture, turning or twisting their bodies and heads to alter the angle of viewing.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Magnifying glasses and binoculars: let your child see the world from a new perspective by exploring distance and magnification.

-          Playground or soft play exploring: taking your child to a designated play space to gain some height and look out from is fab for the orientation schema.

-          Treasure hunt: Hide their toys around inside or outside and help them seek them out at all different heights and from different angles – use a stool and a tube for them to look through to spot them!

The Trajectory Schema

If you have ever been around a toddler, you’ve probably noticed this schema making an appearance! Children explore how things move in every direction – including through the air. They love exploring trajectories of objects when thrown or pushed, watching how they move whether that be vertically or diagonally.

Common Behaviours: Pushing down towers, throwing objects such as toys or food. Children may knock things off shelves or tables. They also take an interest in their own trajectories and might try to run fast frequently, sometimes at seemingly unsuitable moments.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Safe ball throwing: activities where your little is allowed to throw can help reinforce boundaries you set and redirect the behaviour safely.

-          Ring toss: you can DIY this using carboard tubes stuck down to a weighted box and paper plates (just cut out the middles).

-          Tower tumbles: build towers or make rows of blocks for your child to push, knock down or roll balls into.

The Positioning Schema

Our final one of the 9 main schemas sees children showing interest in patterns and positions. They may start lining up their toys or placing objects in seemingly specific orders.

Common behaviours: children may start putting things in specific places, such as putting food a certain way on their plate. They might show an interest in lining up toys or placing random objects into rows or repeating patterns.

Supporting Play Ideas:

-          Tape rows: stick strips of masking tape to your carpet or floor in lines or patterns as a basis for lining things up.

-          DIY garage: use pieces of paper or card to draw ‘parking spaces’ or squares on and provide toy vehicles to play with.

-          Ordering activities: use a selection of differently sized toys such as stacking cups or teddies and model sorting them by size or shape into a row.

The Bottom Line

Schema play is a fascinating aspect of development in the early years, explaining hundreds of patterns of behaviours we might see in our little ones as they grow. Don’t forget to save this article for inspiration on activities your little one will LOVE when they begin exploring a particular schema!

Until next time – happy kidhood!