What are play schemas and why do they matter?

You might have already heard of schematic play, and maybe you’ve seen it in action. But what does it really mean – and how does it help children develop skills?

That’s exactly where Lynnette Brock comes in. As an expert in schematic play and co-director of SchemaPlay, it’s about looking at what children enjoy and are able to do, and giving them as many chances as they can to explore that in different ways.

“It’s a bit like spinning a plate in the air. When the plate is in the air spinning, children are in flow and are able to engage in their own learning. Sometimes the plate begins to wobble slightly, and that’s when you, as a practitioner, can give it a little nudge to start it spinning again. But no more than that.”

But what does the right kind of nudge look like? Let’s take a look at some examples of schematic play in action, and break down what you can do to help support it in your own setting.

Schemas: how children learn through play

So, let's start with the basic question: what does schematic play mean?

Simply put, schematic behaviour is the way a child explores a certain idea while they play. This is often seen as repetitive behaviour that may not always make sense to the adult, but it’s a way for children to really dig into the idea and try to understand it.

We call them schemas, and each schema involves particular behaviour, like throwing objects to the ground repeatedly or unscrewing lids over and over again.

What does schema play look like?

Now that you know a bit about how schemas can develop, let’s take a closer look at a containing scheme in action and why a little help from you makes a massive difference in helping them develop new skills.

• Charlie has a containing schema. Whenever he can, he sits inside the sandbox, in the wendy house, and contains animal figures in bags and trucks. His practitioner makes sure he can explore this in as many ways as he can.
• Charlie’s parents bring in a picture of Charlie and a popcorn seller at the circus one morning, and he can’t stop talking about the popcorn seller. The practitioner realises it’s because popcorn is ‘contained’ in a large glass box.
• His practitioner has a fantastic idea: They’re going to role play and Charlie is going to be a popcorn seller. His practitioner creates paper corns for him to fill up with popcorn. This is a classic example of understanding schematic behaviour and then using scaffolding to extend the learning process. The practitioner acknowledges the behaviour and introduces something new within Charlie’s capabilities.‍
• They decide together to create a price for the popcorn, just like he saw at the circus. They decide on 1 token for a small cone of popcorn, 2 tokens for a medium and 3 tokens for a large. The practitioner then suggests he sell his popcorn to other children in the setting.
• Charlie starts to count out the tokens as the other children enter his play, and he sorts the cones between small, medium and large. His motivation to engage in containing enabled him to apply other schemas like sorting.
• The next day, Charlie starts lining up animals in rows according to size and counting how many there are.

This shows how a practitioner extends a child’s learning without interrupting the flow of their schematic play. The key takeaway here is that Charlie is challenged within the limits of what he already understood, and then applied this to other things around him.

He starts gaining skills in counting as he counts out tokens, and starts to understand different sizes and measuring – maybe ‘medium’ is a completely new word for him. He then applies this to something different the next day, and starts showing a counting schema in a completely different activity.

The result? The activity introduced new ideas built on ideas he could understand, and his practitioner extended that learning just enough for him to build on his know-how himself.

How to identify play schemas

It’s all very well to say ‘This particular child is showing a trajectory schema. You should try and engage with them to extend this.’ But how do you know what the actions mean and what should you be on the lookout for during play?

“Practitioners are really, really hardworking and amazing at their job – their planning is so thorough. But sometimes actually drilling down to what the child is doing gets lost in this planning.” It’s not about creating an environment hoping that it will get children to explore and engage in schemes – it’s about drawing out what they’re interested in, observing what they’re doing and building on it.

“It’s not just about finding out what they’re interested in – it’s about asking yourself why they’re interested in it in the first place.”

If a child is placing dinosaurs repeatedly inside boxes and taking them out again, the dinosaurs might just be the closest objects that help children carry out the idea that interests them. That’s why we need to look at the action they’re doing – not just the thing they’re using to do it. Then you can extend it in as many ways as you can think of.

The child could simply just love dinosaurs, of course! Remember that you’re on the lookout for repetitive actions and behaviour.

How to identify schematic play in children of all ages

To give you more of an idea, let’s take a look at how a trajectory scheme (an interest in how things move) might change over time. We’ll go into specific cases of other schemas, but it’s important to understand that schemes continue over time even if the behaviour changes – they follow us well into adulthood.

Once you understand this, it’ll be much easier to identify schematic behaviour in children of all ages.

• As a baby, things may be repeatedly thrown from a highchair. The child is interested in how far the object will go, and where it will land.
• As a toddler, the child might enjoy throwing balls in the air or down ramps, pushing and watching cars roll down slopes, jumping up and down and pulling tissues out of a box and throwing them.
• When the child goes to a setting, the child might run up and down slopes, go up and down slides repeatedly, build high structures, create long lines of objects and love throwing and emptying things out onto the floor.

The main takeaway from this – schematic behaviour can show itself in many, many different ways. There is no single behaviour for each schema, because every child is unique. Furthermore, it's not your job to try to bring this out in children, it happens on its own. It's your job to notice these patterns as they happen, and structure other activities that encourage and engage children's fascinations.‍

What people get wrong about schemas in children's play

So you’re starting to notice certain behaviours, and are ready to engage with a child in schematic play. The next step is all about interpreting those behaviours – and making sure we understand where the true interest lies.

To understand what might happen if you misunderstand a schema and what that means for the child’s learning journey, let me introduce you to Lucy.

Lucy loves playing in the Post Office area. In particular, she likes to sit there with dozens of paperclips, connecting them all together to make a long line.

The question is – what is Lucy’s true interest? Well according to Lynnette, this is a classic example of a connecting schema, and has absolutely nothing to do with the post office.

“If, as a practitioner, you assume that because she’s in the Post Office it interests her, you might then introduce delivery routes, zones and stamps,” Lynette says. “But Lucy was a connector. The best thing would be to give her beads, magnetic trains that stick together or perhaps building with lego. For Lucy, she was fascinated about why things became one – the Post Office was irrelevant.”

To see this in your own setting, it’s helpful to think about an anchor – an action that’s driving the behaviour. To find it, you can ask yourself questions like:

• What action is the child carrying out?
• Have I seen the child doing this somewhere else? For example, if the child is ‘containing’ in the mud kitchen, have you observed ‘containing’ in the sandplay, at the playdough table, in the block play area?
• What containing activities can you introduce that the child hasn’t explored yet? This could be some new props or role plays, for example. Think about what they’ve enjoyed and what has already helped them develop skills and use that as a building block.

Remember: all schemas are verbs – they’re ‘doing’ things. It’s not simply an interest in an activity. But if a child does like a certain activity, think about how you can use that to develop their schema – not the other way around.‍

Why is schematic play important in early childhood development?

Schemas matter because they give us clues for what excites individual children most about their world. Ultimately, play schemas can help give us more ideas for how to build up key skills in early education by encouraging patterns in play.

Children can be engaged with more than one schema at a time, or tend to favour multiple schemas in their free play. But it's not necessarily children's repeated behaviour that's so important — it's what they're exploring through that behaviour.

All play schemas occur naturally, so it’s not something you need to teach children. But, when we understand the characteristics of different play schemas, we can then provide opportunities for children to play in ways that extend their learning.

Some behaviours might come off as reckless at first glance, like throwing objects in the trajectory schema. But, understanding play schemas helps us see the experimentation and learning occurring when children engage in these forms of play. Observing and developing children’s play schemas is a fantastic way for practitioners to tune into the voice of the child, because play schemas by their very nature demonstrate children’s thoughts, preferences and interests. In terms of child development, they are a way that children explore their own ideas and thoughts and express their thinking through play.

Sound familiar? Most early educators will be able to identify times that they've seen these kinds of behaviours and interests at work, but it’s also important to be curious about what children are learning through the play schema.

However, when Early Years practitioners understand the characteristics of different play schemas, we can identify when our children are using these and then provide opportunities for children to play in ways that extend their learning.

Seen in this light, play schemas are a stepping stone toward developing key skills later in life, and a motivating factor in early childhood brain development.

It's not your job to make schema play happen. Rather, observing the schemas children are naturally experimenting with, and operating within, allows you to provide meaningful play activities that support their learning and development.