Play Schemas!

On today's episode, Sarah gives a down and dirty introduction to Play Schemas!

Don't forget to keep an eye out for the training associated with this episode by visiting the KCCTO training calendar! 

Kids These Days is a co-production of the KCCTO-KITS Infant Toddler Specialist Network (ITSN) and KCCTO Workforce Development (WFD) programs.
The KCCTO-KITS Infant-Toddler Specialist Network is a program of the Kansas Child Care Training Opportunities, Inc. (KCCTO) and the university of Kansas Life Span Institute at Parsons. The Workforce Development Project is a program of KCCTO. Each program is supported through a grant from the Kansas Department For Children And Families’ Child Care And Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency and no official endorsement should be inferred.

To learn more about the Infant Toddler Specialist Network, please visit: http://kskits.org/technical-assistance-0.

To learn more about KCCTO and Workforce Development, please visit: https://kccto.org/

Contact us via email at – kidsthesedayspod@gmail.com

Follow and tag us on Instagram & Facebook @kidsthesedayspod & Twitter @ktdpod

Music credit: Hackbeat by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3843-hackbeat License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:01

Hey, it's Sarah, and this is Kids These Days, a podcast brought to you by grant funding from the Kansas Department for Children and Families. Well, hey all, long time no talk. At least it kind of feels that way. I know I've been doing a lot of interviews this season, and when I signed up for this week at the beginning of the season, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do yet, and I wanted to leave it open so that as the season progressed I could pick something that I thought was kind of cool. And I think I found it in this idea of play schemas. So I was reviewing a training that was written by um one of my colleagues, Lisa Gwynn, and I was like, dang, that's a whole bunch of information that I don't think I knew or that I didn't know how to put into those words. I want to share that. So that's what we're gonna do today. We're gonna talk about schemas and play schemas. So, what is a schema, besides a really funny sounding word? Well, schemas are patterns of repeated behaviors that lead children, humans, to develop ideas and concepts which form the foundation of their understanding of how the world works around them. And, as you might have guessed, uh schemas are worked out by children in everyday play and exploration of their environment. Surely that's something you've heard before if you've listened to any episode of the podcast that we've talked about how important play is, it's how children learn. Right? And so when children are working through these schemas, it's it's directly linked to how their brains develop. Right? Schemas and engaging in schemas build strong brains, they build confidence, and they create new neural pathways for complex learning, which you're like, whoa, wait a minute. We're brain scientists? Yes, didn't you guys know that already? Come on. Okay, I'm gonna give you a couple examples here in a minute of what that actually means. But first, I want to talk about three really important aspects of schemas. Okay, so schemas, as we're gonna learn, there's eight common schemas that children are engaging in as they're learning in their environment. But sometimes these schemas or these repeated behaviors or actions might feel a little challenging or a little um not safe or, you know, kind of rub up against us as adults. So these three important things that you have to remember about schemas are brain urges, right? What is happening in the brain that sparks the onset of this schema during everyday play? So knowing that when children are engaging in these repeated behaviors, right, uh their brain is saying, hey, we need this information, we need this data, we need to put this into the spreadsheet so we know what to do for the next step. Okay, except for I don't think they're saying those words, but you understand. So the third the second aspect, so the first one is brain urges, right? What is their brain saying, hey, we need more of? Then we see those repeated behaviors, right? What are the beh what are the repeated behaviors? What are the things we're seeing over and over again that tells us they're in this schema? And then learning. What learning is happening when they're in when they're engaged in this schema play? So let's talk about the eight schemas. Okay, there is the transporting schema, the transforming schema, the trajectory schema, rotation and circulatory schema, enclosing and enveloping, connecting and disconnecting, positioning and ordering, and orientation and perspective. So I'm not going to go into the deep, deep, nitty-gritty because I want you to come to the training once we start offering it, but I do want to talk just a little bit today about those three, those three aspects we talked about, right? The brain urges, what might be a repeated behavior, and what might be something that they're learning when they're engaging in these schemas. Because the main issue here, guys, is knowledge is power. When you know that these kids' brains are like, oh, we need that information, so we have to do that thing. They're not doing it to make your life harder. I promise. They're trying to be humans. And you know, this business of training little humans for life is kind of a mind-boggling process sometimes. So I'm hoping today this information about play schemas gives you a little bit of, gives you a tool to unboggle. I might need a word for that. Okay, so let's talk first about this transporting schema. The brain urge with a transporting schema is this fascination in moving objects and themselves from one place to another. So you might see a baby holding or shaking a rattle, or uh crawling to a favorite toy, or dump and fill, right? Who loves dump and fill? Raise your hand if you love dump and fill. Here's the thing I'm gonna tell you dump and fill, right? The kids dump and we don't follow through with the fill. You have to follow through with the fill. Otherwise, they will just dump. So when they dump it out, you go, oh, you dumped out the Legos. Let's pick them back up and put them in the bucket. I promise you, hours of fun. Uh, transporting schema, also, you might see like a lot of push, pull, carry, um heavy things, light things, putting things in box boxes, uh, putting things in their pockets, right? It's not just from women like myself who like pockets, it's also to others talk to them about it. What are they learning?

unknown: 5:46

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 5:46

They're learning some problem solving, how long it takes to get from one place to another, etc. Okay? And I know I'm hitting these kind of hard and heavy and quick, and but I promise you this is such good information, and it'll be even gooder information when you come to the training. I promise you. Okay, so we talked about transporting. Now let's talk about transforming, right? So this is the brain urge when you are highly interested in how things change and shape, color, texture. Um so you might see babies, right? Baby babies put everything in their mouth, right? They're exploring textures with their hands in their mouth. So when you see those babies putting everything in their mouths, including other people's hands, possibly they are in a transforming schema. Um, you might see a lot of banging things together, right? What sound does that make? Uh arranging loose parts, drawing on their own bodies, right? Uh mixing mixing things, especially food. Okay, so what are they learning? They're learning some cause and effect, some object permanence, um, how things keep and change their form. Okay, so this next schema is the trajectory schema. And this is where our brain urge wants us to explore the path of movement specifically horizontally and vertically, right? So that's babies um laying on their backs and reaching out for a mobile, waving their arms around, their arms and their legs. Um, it's other babies, you know, babies dropping things from high chairs, right? Uh, you think this is a game. Of course it is. It's a trajectory game. They're trying to figure out that gravity and force. Um, trajectory, you're gonna also see some dump and fill, um, but a lot of throw, drop, run, spin in circles, swinging, climbing, right? This is a lot of gross motor stuff. It's what they're learning in this in this schema, this trajectory schema is that hand and hand and eye coordination and foot and eye coordination, right? That sense of being separate from that your body is separate and independent from others. Okay, so let's talk about the rotation and circulatory schema. So the brain urge is this desire to investigate and experience circular movement. Okay, so you might see babies turning their heads to follow a moving object or a person, um, turning the pages of a book, spinning a toy, spinning themselves, drawing, right? When you give a toddler or an older infant a crayon, almost always, right, you see them start to kind of just do that scribble and drawing, right? That's a rotation and circulatory schema, right? They're not just dizzy little tops, they're they're experiencing their bodies experience it, right? And so what they're learning is how to move and balance how force and motion affects objects, right? If I push the crayon down really hard, it makes a little bit darker of a mark. Okay, so then we move into the enclosing and enveloping schema. And this brain urge is exploring how objects and and themselves, our bodies, us as humans, how we fit and are organized, right? So this is things like peekaboo grabbing onto an adult's fingers, being swaddled, um, covering themselves up with blankets or other things up with blankets, putting on dress-up clothes, lots of layers of dress-up clothes, um, making building enclosures with blocks. And so they're learning some of that trial and error and that proprioceptive system that helps them actually learn how to kind of calm their own body when they know, oh, I can I can fit myself into this space and understand where I stop and it starts. The next schema is connecting and disconnecting, right? So this one kind of gives itself away. The brain urge is experimenting with how things connect and disconnect, right? Plugging, unplugging, uh, grasping, releasing, tugging, uh, putting blocks together, like duplos or Legos. Um, but this also is knocking towers over, right? Knocking towers over of unit blocks or putting things in order and then kind of pushing them to scatter it. They're not doing it to make a mess. They are learning spatial awareness, right? They're learning to predict what will happen if I build this up and knock it over. Okay? A good rule of thumb with that that I teach, especially with toddlers, is that you have to ask before you knock it over. Only the builder can knock it over without asking. So the next schema is the positioning and ordering schema. Right? So this brain urge is when how materials and objects should be organized or placed in a particular order. And you can see how that kind of goes along with that last schema, that connecting and disconnecting, right? So it's reaching for toys, it's stacking blocks, sorting toys, materials by size, um, you know, in a particular order, pattern sequence. Um, it's kiddos that do not want their food to touch. Okay. So just thinking about this idea of, you know, I have to position an order in order to connect, disconnect. So things that they're learning would be like those some of those math concepts, right? Number shapes, space, order sequence, symmetry patterns, etc. Okay, so the last commonplace schema is orientation and perspective. And that brain urge is about how the world looks from different angles or perspectives, right? Understanding the position of your own body in space. So again, those babies watching their own reflection in the mirror, turning their head to follow an adult's face. Um, older babies, young toddlers, this is one of my favorites, right? Is when they hold objects upside down or sideways to look at them, or they start to put their own bodies upside down, right? Like looking through their their legs or looking at you through when you look upside down at their legs. Like upside down is this crazy concept. This is okay. Have you ever watched a toddler try to sit down in a chair that's their size? And you kind of just want to be like, my man, turn around and sit down. But their brains, their brains are working through this orientation and perspective schema, and so it's like they have to step up onto the chair, hold on to the back, turn themselves around, and then sit down, right? They're learning their orientation and perspective, and so they're engaging that vestibular sense, that gross motor development, um, that positional language. I'm on top of, I'm gonna put the block on. Okay, so that was, man, that was even for me, that was fast, short, and sweet. But I hope that that gives you kind of an idea. So, one last thing I want to leave you with, um, with this whole idea of schematic play, and knowing that as I gave examples and talked about some of the repeated behaviors, some of them were the same across schemas. So, so it's important to know that children exhibit schemas in different ways because again, we're all individuals and we're all different, and there's three different ways to look at how children exhibit schemas, right? So the first one is kind of kind of a little bit how we were talking, um, is this idea of a cluster of schemas, right? So many children are going through more than one and sometimes several schemas at one time. Um, and a lot of them, like we just said, that you know, positioning and ordering really does kind of go with the connecting and disconnecting. And I would say probably with orientation and perspective, right? If I'm stacking blocks, I, you know, have to know the position that where they are in space, where my body is in space, what goes next, a big one on the bottom or on top. Um, and and those schemas kind of group and regroup as that child's learning grows and changes. And then there's there's this idea of a dominant schema, right? So even within those clusters, you may see something that's a little more dominant, right? So again, that idea of the toddler kind of climbing, um, climbing into a chair to sit down. I would say with that, probably the the primary, the dominant schema would be the orientation and perspective, while also having a little bit of a cluster of positioning and orienting, or an ordering, sorry, positioning and ordering, and maybe even a little bit of enclosing enveloping rotation, right? Because I have to turn my body to sit down. But the primary or dominant schema there is the orientation and perspective. And then a third way that children exhibit these schemas is that there's no schema evident, right? Some children just don't exhibit any schemas at all in their play, and that's not uncommon. Um, children, humans, we all learn in different ways. And it's not developmentally inappropriate for children to not use schemas in play. Um, it just is that, you know, sometimes it's just not there. That's just not where they are right now. Um, I think it would be interesting now that you have this knowledge of the different schemas, to really be thinking about your kids, observing them, watching them, seeing what schemas they fall into. Um, you know, what what clusters are you seeing? How do they go together? I'd love to hear your examples of that. So again, Booth was short, sweet, and to the point. Um, I would very much encourage you to keep your eyes out on the Casito webpage for um training related to play schemas that will be coming, I would imagine probably after the first of the year. Um we're in the process of the we're in the review process right now. So um, yeah, I would love to hear your love to hear your thoughts, your um how your what you see as clusters of schemas, what do you see of your children and their clusters? Um, feel free to reach out uh to us at any time. Uh follow us on social media, hit us up with an email. Those addresses will be at the end of the podcast if you want to listen for them. Um, and you know, don't forget to go and rate us, uh, give us a little review, share us with your friends and your families and anybody that cares for children, and share this information about play schemas. I will tell you that my brain has kind of been a little blown up going through this of really thinking about the the scientific part of our brains and what our brains need with these urges. And I also think that when we can look at the play and actions and repeated behaviors that children engage in as their brain going, ooh, I need that data for the spreadsheet, it's a little bit easier for us to say, Oh, you're not doing that just to make my life harder. You're trying to learn how to be a human. And so that just puts another puts us on that, it just continues to put us on that path of teaching tiny humans how to be big humans. And that's a big job. So I hope this information gave you a little bit of uh a little bit of information to take and use and maybe give you a little light of under your fire of ways to look at kids and what they're doing and how you can help facilitate that learning. So, until next time, see you later. Kids These Days is a co-production of the Casito Kids Infant Tildare Specialist Network and the Casito Workforce Development Programs. These programs are supported through a grant from the Kansas Department for Children and Families Childcare and Early Education Services. However, information or opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of the agency, and no official endorsement should be inferred. If you have questions, comments, suggestions, or want to share your practice related to this or previous episode, please email us at kidsthese dayspod at gmail, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Kids These Days Pod and on Twitter at KTD Pod. Don't forget to hit subscribe, rate, and review. That's how others learn about us. This episode was written, recorded, and edited by Sarah Holmes. Music track had to be by Kevin McLeod.