YummiBlog — learning through play RSS

Children with a trajectory schema enjoy movement. They like to move themselves and to be moved. They're drawn to watching movement and making movement happen.  I recently watched my two grandsons at play. Hamish, 2 years 4 month, was pushing a train around a track. Vincent, 6 months younger, was immediately attracted but appeared to disrupt the activity, repeatedly throwing the trains and pushing them away in random directions out of Hamish's reach, and laughing. Vincent has a trajectory schema. Hamish, who likes an enclosed track made an attempt to join Vincent's play. Throwing a train across the room, at which Vincent laughed his approval, but Hamish then returned to his play - throwing doesn't particularly interest him.  This illustrates...

A schema is a pattern of play in young children which can be observed as they explore their world and make sense of it. Some children have several schemas while others have a very dominant preferred one. If your pre school child regularly does something distinctive in their play, the chances are you can think of it as an uncontrollable play urge, also known as a dominant schema.  When you understand how these are manifested in their play, its fascinating to see how your child is learning about their world and processing it.  Here as some of the most commonly seen schemas:  Trajectory  Rotation  Enclosing Enveloping Transporting Positioning Connecting Positioning  Orientation  Transformation  I'll discuss each of these in a separate...