What are schema behaviours?

Why do young children tip everything out of cupboards?

Have you ever wondered why children tip everything out of cupboards, line things up, put things in their pockets and spin around and around? Or why some old people make little piles of items all over the house and fold pieces of paper and material into the smallest of squares?

These behaviours are called Schemas and threads of thinking have been logged by some, including Cathy Nutbrown and Tina Bruce who observed many children during their early years in pre-school.

Schemas are patterns that show up when we look carefully at children’s play during their early years. They are also seen when there is a neurological deterioration in an elderly person suffering from a disease such as dementia. I witnessed this when my own mother was ill.

Schemas are a thinking framework that helps us to make sense of our world.

It seems that these schema patterns are a sort of geometry of mind. They provide a structure for the neural network to shape up. They are a kind of thinking framework that helps us to make sense of our world.

It is best to think of schemas as being a cluster of pieces which fit together” – Tina Bruce

As they move around, exploring their ideas, babies and toddlers can be observed to be frequently exploring a particular pattern of thought and movement such as in and out, transporting or rotation, exhibiting an underlying logic in their play. Play that appears idiosyncratic or even mischievous can also give clues to children’s schematic preoccupations” Julia Manning-Morton and Maggie Thorpe

In the book “Again and Again”  authors Clare Beswick and Stella Louis mention a few schemas in some detail:

• Trajectory – an interest in dropping things from a high chair or cot or climbing up and jumping off things. Digging, showing – vertical and horizontal etc
  Later emerging an understanding of – Vertical – height, width, depth perception. Horizontal – length, timelines in history.
• Enclosing – putting borders around drawing and paintings, making block enclosures, for example, animals in a field with fences around them.
  Later emerging an understanding of – Maps, geometry, regular, shapes, art, figures drawing
• žEnveloping – completely covering themselves or objects, wrapping things up.
  Later emerging an understanding of – surrounding and covering, an area in mathematics, greenhouses in biology and horticulture, hot air balloons and the physics of gases, camouflage, colour and shading in art
• Containment – e.g. putting objects in pockets, bags, inside and outside containers etc.
  Later emerging an understanding of– capacity and volume
• Transporting – moving themselves or objects from one place to another, bringing objects to an adult, carrying things round in bags and containers.
  Later emerging an understanding of – quantity and understanding of number

Schemas provide a fabulous focus for identifying children’s interests

They also provide resources in learning environments that nourish the interconnection of the internal landscape for thinking and making sense of the world.

Over the years, I have led numerous pieces of training, focusing on this amazing topic. This is how one of the course participants researched the subject and applied her learning after attending a training course.

Course participants research on Schemas:

Charlotte has been a teacher in a Primary school in Southampton for 11 years. She has taught across the Foundation Stage, Key Stage 1 and 2 and has recently taken a post as a Children’s Centre Support Teacher (CCST). In this role Charlotte supports and leads others to ensure that the Early Years Foundation Stage is being implemented and that provision and practice is of high quality. Charlotte does this by supporting her own Children’s Centre and Nursery and by visiting settings in the catchment of the Children’s Centre. She has 3 children of her own. Her eldest son is 6 1/2 years old, her daughter is 5 years old and her youngest son is 2 1/2 years old. The following project was completed after observing her youngest son at play.

The assumption is that he [my son] is exhibiting schema behaviours in line with trajectory, rotation, connection and enclosure because he:

• loves playing with balls (trajectory)
• loves playing with vehicles; specifically cars, trains, helicopters and tractor (trajectory)
• likes joining tracks for his trains (although he prefers this to be done for him) (connecting)
• is obsessed with shutting doors (enclosure, trajectory)
• likes throwing away rubbish (enclosure, trajectory)
• loves bubbles and balloons (trajectory)
• enjoys spinning when dancing (rotation)

I tested my assumptions through observation over a few days. 

We went to preschool together and I observed him freely engaging in many self-chosen activities: he played with trains, pushed a Lego car he had built, pushed a car on the track and I also observed him playing with many other toys which seemed to support an interest in the trajectory schema. My son observed objects dropping,  threaded, and watched the sand in the egg timer drop down. He played with the marble run and also enjoyed pushing objects. I watched him enjoy pushing objects horizontally in addition to vertically.

He experimented using pieces from the marble run to push along toy cars and trains and then he discovered he could use the pieces to push the marbles too, which he greatly enjoyed.

I began to question whether my original assumptions were distorting my observations.

Was I seeing only what I wanted to see? And then something happened. His reaction was instant and unmistakable. A girl walked past pushing a toy vacuum cleaner up and down the floor, he stared and said “I want to do that”

Trajectory schema definition:

An interest in how objects and people move, and how children can affect that movement. This schema can be seen in children’s actions when they drop objects, jump, swing and climb up and down repeatedly” (Again! Again! S Fetherstone)

After these observations, I reconsidered my original assumptions about my son’s interest in trajectory, rotation, connection and enclosure and conclude that he does in fact, have one prime dominant interest right now, which is for horizontal and vertical trajectory.

Communication, Language and Literacy

Use his interest to develop his vocabulary e.g. words that describe the movement of the objects he is using. Share books, songs and rhymes with him that reflect the context as well as the thread of thinking. For example, books and songs about cars and trains.

Creative Development 

Provide opportunities for him to use cars, balls and other objects that move vertically and that he can push through paint, gloop, sand etc, to create patterns and lines.

Mathematics

Count with him as he pushes cars, blows bubbles etc
Race trains, cars to See who comes 1st, 2nd etc
Have number labels e. in parking spaces for cars and bikes
Play skittles with him to enable him to develop his understanding of number, addition and subtraction.

PSED

Encourage sharing and turn-taking e.g. when on the large cars and bikes.

Understanding the World

Provide opportunities for him to predict, explore, investigate and experience e.g. ramps for his cars, bubbles etc. Let him use a camera to record his interests.

I’m grateful to Charlotte for sharing her work with us.

I hope this blog has provided you with more understanding of schema behaviours and the next time a child wants to play with their cars over and over again, my hope is you remember he might be interested in the spinning wheels – a rotation schema.  And when that little child you know has things in his pocket that do not belong to him, it is likely he is interested in containment, not stealing!

And finally.. PLEASE DO CONSIDER KINDLY the elderly person who might be acting this way too. Remember that, quite possibly, they could be in the beginning stages of dementia or have another neurological condition.

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