Transporting, trajectory, and positioning schemas

Part two of my Schemas: learning through play mini-series is on transporting, trajectory and positioning schemas. We will look at what they are and what they may look like within a young child’s play.  I will also suggest some activities relating to each one of these schemas, which you can implement to support children’s learning and development.

Transporting schema:

What it can look like within a child’s play

Have you noticed a child in your classroom carrying boxes of toys from one area to another? Pouring water into containers and taking them to another place? Or putting objects in their pockets as they move around? All of these behaviours can be associated with the transporting schema. The transporting schema is one of the most common in young children. As the name suggests, this schema involves moving an object from one area to another repeatedly by using their hands or other methods to transport them.

Supporting activities

The most important way to support children in exploring this schema is to let them do it! Although it may be frustrating to have to sort through toys at the end of the day, it shows a child’s active learning. It gives you an insight into what a child is particularly interested in and what areas of the room they are utilising the most. All of which is very useful information for planning a child’s next steps and further learning opportunities. Some activities that you can implement within your practice can include:

• Sorting objects with tweezers: give a child a pot of sorting bears or different coloured pom-poms and encourage them to use the tweezers to sort them into colours.
• Treasure hunt: give each child a bag or a container, ask them to walk around the classroom and collect things that interest them. After they have done this, you can talk to them about the things they have collected.
• Small-world construction: set up a tuff tray with different types of construction materials, such as pebbles, sand and soil. Add some dumper trucks and spoons so that the children can fill them up and push them around the tuff tray and tip the materials out.

Trajectory schema:

What it can look like within a child’s play

The main purpose of the trajectory schema is to investigative. When you are feeding a baby, have you noticed that they repeatedly throw their food on the floor? Or constantly throw toys across the room? The trajectory schema is mostly observed in the youngest of infants while they learn how things move. You may not recognise it as a play experience at first, but the child may feel a sense of enjoyment from making movement happen.

This schema is not just limited to objects or resources but can also include the trajectory of the child themselves. Children can be just as interested in how their body moves and may climb or jump off things to explore this. Often, this is mistaken as ‘challenging’ behaviour. However, the child is busy investigating how objects move and what happens to them when they do.

Supporting activities

Although a child is engaging in active learning, it is not always appropriate or safe to throw certain objects, especially in a busy classroom environment. Therefore, if you are noticing children are throwing toys repeatedly, you need to redirect them towards activities that replicate these actions but in a safe way. Some activities that can support the trajectory schema are:

• Throwing balls: provide children with different size balls which they can throw freely outside. You could also set up an activity within the classroom, such as having a bucket and let the children take in turns to try and throw the bean bags into it (with adult support/supervision).
• Obstacle course: it is important to provide children with opportunities to explore how their body moves in safe and appropriate ways. Set up an obstacle course that encourages children to crawl, jump, climb, hop, walk, and run etc.
• Ball and water runs: use some PVC piping to create tunnels and runs for children to either push balls and cars down or to pour water down. If possible, use pipes that are split in half or clear so that the children can observe how the objects move through the pipes.

Positioning schema:

What it can look like within a child’s play

The positioning schema focuses on concepts such as classification and categorising, and order, alignment, and sequencing. And these early concepts can develop into more complex mathematical concepts at a later stage, such as understanding shape, space, and measure.

This schema is one of the most misidentified behaviours in young children. How many times have you observed a child repeatedly lining toys up, or repeatedly building the same tower of blocks, and your first thought has been Autism? Although lining objects up is a behaviour associated with autism, it is a very common stage of play in young children. Children who are engaging in the positioning schema are interested in lining things up and placing them within a space in a certain way.

Supporting activities

The main way to support this schema is to provide children with the space and resources to position and reposition objects. Although it can be tempting to clear away after a child has lined toys up, if it is practical, leave the resources out as they have left them so that they can revisit them. Other ways to support the positioning schema are:

• Toy cars: make a car park (this can be as simple as drawing squares on a large piece of paper and placing it on the floor) and encourage the children to park the toy cars in the spaces.
• Loose parts: provide the children with a range of loose parts and give them time to look, sort and position them in ways which they choose.
• Cardboard boxes/blocks: give children different sized cardboard boxes or blocks which they can spend time lining up or stacking.

Key point to remember

Although schematic play is most often observable in toddlers, older children can also engage in this type of play. When implementing any of the suggested activities within this series, be mindful of what age and stage of development each child you are working with is currently at. You may need to adjust the activities to make them more suitable and, importantly, safe for each child.