Schema play is a fascinating window into how toddlers learn about and make sense of their world through repeated patterns of behavior. These patterns, far from being random or merely disruptive, are actually sophisticated learning mechanisms that help children develop cognitive frameworks for understanding their environment. When you see a toddler repeatedly throwing toys, spinning in circles, or meticulously lining up objects, they’re actively engaged in schema play – constructing knowledge through experimentation and repetition. This blog post explores the concept of schema play in toddlers, its developmental significance, common types of schemas, effective strategies for supporting this important play, and the developmental milestones associated with different schemas.
What is Schema Play?
Schema play refers to the repeated patterns of behavior that young children naturally engage in as they explore and learn about their world. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget first introduced the concept of schemas in the early 1900s, describing them as “units of knowledge” that help children organize and interpret information from their experiences. Later, researcher Chris Athey expanded on this work through the Froebel Project, defining schemas as “patterns of repeatable behavior into which experiences are assimilated and that are gradually co-ordinated”.
A schema (or play schema) functions like a set of instructions or a mental model that children create through trial and error to understand how the world works. Adults use schemas all the time without noticing – when you switch on a light or make a sandwich, you’re using a schema you’ve developed over time. For toddlers, however, these schemas are still being built, which is why they engage in repetitive behaviors that might seem purposeless to adults but are actually crucial learning experiences.
Schema play is particularly noticeable in toddlers who engage in what might look like destruction testing: bashing, banging, pushing, and pulling objects while trying to answer questions like “What does this thing do?” and “What happens if I drop it?”. These behaviors aren’t random – they’re purposeful explorations driven by a deep urge to understand cause and effect relationships. Toddlers are making sense of their world, one action at a time, building neural pathways and developing important concepts about how things work.
Common Types of Schema Play in Toddlers
Researchers have identified several distinct schemas that toddlers commonly explore through play. While children may explore multiple schemas simultaneously, here are nine of the most frequently observed play schemas:
Trajectory Schema
The trajectory schema involves exploring how objects (or bodies) move through space and is one of the earliest schemas to develop. Children with this schema are fascinated with things that move up, down, across, or through the air.
What it looks like: Throwing toys, dropping food from a high chair, jumping from surfaces, kicking balls, pouring water, or watching things fall. A child might repeatedly throw toys from their stroller, drop items from their high chair, or be constantly on the move – running, jumping, and climbing.
Supporting activities: Provide opportunities for safe throwing with soft balls into baskets, water play with pouring activities, bubble chasing, playing on swings, and setting up ramps for rolling objects. On windy days, play with scarves and ribbons to observe how they move through the air.
Rotational Schema
This schema focuses on circular movements and the concept of rotation. Children exploring this schema are interested in anything that turns, spins, or rotates.
What it looks like: Spinning their body around, twirling with scarves, turning door handles, watching washing machine cycles, playing with wheels, or anything that turns. A child might spin themselves until dizzy, repeatedly open and close doors, or be fascinated with the spinning of a fan or washing machine.
Supporting activities: Provide toys with wheels and cogs, spinning tops, opportunities for dancing and twirling, windmills, and spinning toys. Salad spinner art projects can also engage this schema while creating something visual.
Enclosing Schema
The enclosing schema involves creating boundaries or fences around objects or themselves. Children with this schema enjoy creating spaces that are bounded or contained.
What it looks like: Building fences for toy animals, making train tracks in circles, creating boundaries with blocks, or building barricades. A child might surround their toys with blocks, build circular train tracks, or create “houses” for their dolls or figurines.
Supporting activities: Provide building materials for creating enclosures, play with fences and toy animals, and encourage fort building. Drawing activities where children can create enclosed spaces on paper can also support this schema.
Enveloping Schema
This schema involves covering, wrapping, or hiding objects or themselves. Children are interested in making things disappear and reappear.
What it looks like: Wrapping dolls in blankets, hiding under covers, putting things in bags or boxes, covering toys with fabric, or wrapping presents. A child might enjoy being wrapped in a blanket, covering their toys completely, or hiding objects in containers.
Supporting activities: Provide fabric pieces for wrapping, opportunities for dressing up, materials for gift wrapping, and containers with lids. Play peek-a-boo games and set up treasure hunts for hidden objects.
Transporting Schema
The transporting schema focuses on moving objects from one place to another. Children with this schema are constantly on the move with their possessions.
What it looks like: Filling bags, pockets, or containers with items and carrying them around, pushing carts filled with toys, or moving collections of objects from one room to another. A child might fill their pockets with small treasures, use a wagon to transport toys, or move items between containers.
Supporting activities: Provide baskets, bags, and containers for collecting and moving items, wheeled toys for transporting, and opportunities for gathering natural materials like sticks and leaves during outdoor play. Set up simple delivery games where items need to be moved from one location to another.
Connecting Schema
This schema involves joining things together and taking them apart. Children are exploring how things fit together and come apart.
What it looks like: Building with construction toys, linking train tracks, threading beads, gluing things together, using tape to attach items, or taking apart puzzles. A child might be constantly attaching toys together, sticking papers together with tape, or attaching and detaching puzzle pieces.
Supporting activities: Provide construction toys, threading activities, materials for craft projects involving gluing and taping, and simple puzzles. Cover a wall with sticky notes and let your toddler enjoy both sticking them on and ripping them off again.
Positioning Schema
The positioning schema involves ordering, arranging, and organizing objects in specific ways. Children with this schema are developing their understanding of spatial relationships and patterns.
What it looks like: Lining up toys in specific orders, creating patterns, sorting by color or size, completing puzzles, or being particular about where things belong. A child might meticulously arrange their toys in lines or patterns, sort objects by attributes, or become upset if items are not in their “correct” places.
Supporting activities: Provide opportunities for sorting and classifying, puzzles, ordering activities (like arranging objects from smallest to biggest), and loose parts for creating patterns and arrangements.
Orientation Schema
This schema involves viewing things from different perspectives and positions. Children are exploring how things look from various viewpoints.
What it looks like: Hanging upside down, looking through their legs, climbing to high points, viewing objects from different angles, or using binoculars and magnifying glasses. A child might enjoy being held upside down, climbing to look down from heights, or looking at familiar objects from unusual angles.
Supporting activities: Provide opportunities for climbing and exploring different bodily positions, mirrors at different heights, magnifying glasses, binoculars, and kaleidoscopes. Encourage gross motor activities like climbing, jumping, rolling, and crawling under things.
Transformation Schema
The transformation schema explores how things change in form or appearance. Children are interested in how materials and substances can be altered.
What it looks like: Mixing colors, adding water to sand, engaging in cooking activities, melting ice, or manipulating play dough. A child might be fascinated with mixing paints, adding water to dirt to make mud, or watching ice melt.
Supporting activities: Provide sensory experiences with materials that change (like play dough or clay), cooking and baking opportunities, sand and water play, and art activities involving color mixing.
The Developmental Significance of Schema Play
Schema play is far more than just repetitive behavior-it’s a crucial mechanism for cognitive development. Piaget’s work established that schemas form the foundation of intellectual development, while Chris Athey’s research demonstrated how schema play enables children to build increasingly complex mental models of the world.
When toddlers engage in schema play, they’re building neural pathways and developing important concepts that will serve as building blocks for future learning. The repeated exploration of schemas allows children to test hypotheses, make predictions, and develop theories about how the world works. These experiences form the foundation for later understanding in mathematics, science, language, and problem-solving.
According to Athey’s research, schema play contributes to several aspects of development: conceptual understanding, spatial awareness, language acquisition, and logical thinking. For example, when a toddler explores the trajectory schema by repeatedly dropping objects, they’re learning about gravity, cause and effect, and properties of different materials. Similarly, positioning schema play helps develop early mathematical concepts related to pattern, order, and classification.
One of the most fascinating aspects of schema play is how it cuts across traditional learning domains. A child exploring the transformation schema through mixing colors is simultaneously developing scientific understanding (how materials interact), mathematical concepts (proportions and quantities), and creative expression. This holistic nature of schema play makes it particularly valuable in early childhood development.
It’s important to note that schema play is intrinsically motivated-children are driven by their own curiosity and will repeat actions until they’ve satisfied their need to understand a particular concept. Once they’ve mastered one schema, the interest typically diminishes as they move on to explore others, though many children explore multiple schemas simultaneously.
Strategies for Supporting Schema Play
Understanding schema play allows parents and educators to support toddlers’ natural learning processes more effectively. Here are evidence-based strategies for supporting schema play:
Observe and Identify Schemas
The first step in supporting schema play is to carefully observe children’s repetitive behaviors to identify which schemas they’re exploring. Watch for patterns that persist over days or weeks rather than fleeting interests. Keep in mind that children may be exploring multiple schemas simultaneously or shifting between schemas as they play.
Look beyond the surface behavior to understand the learning that’s happening. What might look like disruptive behavior-throwing food, emptying bookshelves, or wrapping the cat in blankets-may actually be valuable schema exploration. By identifying the schema at work, you can respond more appropriately and provide alternative ways to explore the same schema.
Documentation through photos, videos, or written observations can help you track patterns over time and share insights with other caregivers or educators. This documentation can become a valuable record of the child’s learning journey and help you plan appropriate experiences based on their current interests.
Create Schema-Friendly Environments
Once you’ve identified which schemas a child is exploring, you can intentionally design environments and provide materials that support that exploration. Different schemas benefit from different types of resources:
For trajectory schema exploration, create safe spaces for throwing, jumping, and moving objects through space. Provide soft balls, bean bags, water play opportunities, ramps for rolling objects, and safe climbing structures. Simple activities like blowing bubbles or playing with scarves on a windy day can also engage this schema.
For rotational schema, offer toys with wheels, spinning tops, opportunities for dance and movement, and simple mechanical toys that demonstrate rotation. Even everyday experiences like watching a washing machine spin or using a salad spinner can be fascinating for children exploring this schema.
For enclosing and enveloping schemas, provide plenty of containers, fabric pieces, boxes of various sizes, and materials for building enclosures. Create cozy spaces where children can experience being enclosed themselves, such as tents, canopies, or blanket forts.
For the connecting schema, offer building materials, threading activities, tape and glue for joining items, train tracks, and simple puzzles. Even everyday activities like covering a wall with sticky notes for children to remove and reattach can support this schema exploration.
Redirect Rather Than Restrict
When schema explorations become challenging-throwing food, emptying shelves, or hiding important items-try redirecting rather than restricting the behavior. Understanding the schema at work helps you offer appropriate alternatives that meet the same learning need:
If a child is throwing food (trajectory schema), acknowledge their interest in throwing and provide appropriate throwing activities after mealtime, such as tossing soft balls into a basket. Clear language like “Food stays on the table, balls are for throwing” helps set boundaries while respecting the schema interest.
If they’re repeatedly emptying containers (trajectory combined with transportation schemas), provide specific containers filled with interesting items that are appropriate for dumping and refilling. Rotate these materials to maintain interest while protecting your belongings.
If a child is wrapping household items in toilet paper (enveloping schema), provide specific materials designated for wrapping, such as fabric scraps and dolls or stuffed animals. This honors their schema exploration while protecting household items.
Join Play Appropriately
When joining in a child’s schema play, be careful to match your play actions to their current schema interest. For example, if a child is exploring rotation by twirling scarves, join them in twirling rather than throwing the scarves (which would introduce trajectory). This requires careful observation and responsiveness to the child’s lead.
Use schema-friendly language that describes what’s happening in the play: “You’re spinning around and around!” (rotation) or “You’ve hidden the teddy completely under the blanket!” (enveloping). This language supports concept development and builds vocabulary related to the schema.
Follow the child’s lead rather than imposing your own play ideas. Schema play is intrinsically motivated, and children benefit most when they can direct their own explorations. Your role is to support, extend, and occasionally suggest new possibilities within their current schema interests.
Plan Intentional Extensions
Based on your observations of a child’s schema interests, you can plan intentional extensions that deepen their exploration. For example, if you notice a child is fascinated with the trajectory schema, you might:
Create an outdoor obstacle course with opportunities for climbing, jumping, and moving in different directions. Set up a water wall with funnels, tubes, and containers for exploring how water moves. Provide ramps of different inclines to test how various objects roll down them.
Extensions should build on current interests rather than redirecting to unrelated activities. The goal is to deepen and broaden the schema exploration, not replace it with adult-directed learning.
Schema Play and Developmental Milestones
Schema play evolves as children grow, with certain schemas typically appearing at different developmental stages, though there’s significant individual variation in this progression.
Early Toddlerhood (12-18 months)
Trajectory and rotation are often among the first schemas to emerge, as they align with toddlers’ developing mobility and interest in cause and effect. At this stage, toddlers are typically engaged in sensorimotor exploration, discovering what their bodies can do and how they can affect objects in their environment.
You might see a 15-month-old repeatedly dropping objects from their high chair, delighting in the trajectory of the fall and the sound made upon impact. They’re not being deliberately difficult-they’re conducting important experiments about gravity, cause and effect, and the properties of different objects.
Similarly, a young toddler might be fascinated with spinning objects or their own body, exploring the rotational schema through simple actions like turning doorknobs or watching wheels spin. This exploration helps develop understanding of movement and spatial relationships.
Middle Toddlerhood (18-24 months)
As toddlers develop greater mobility and manipulative skills, schemas like transporting, enclosing, and enveloping often become more prominent. These schemas align with cognitive developments in object permanence and spatial understanding.
An 18-month-old might spend long periods filling a basket with objects, carrying it across the room, dumping it out, and repeating the process. This transporting schema exploration helps them understand that objects can be moved from place to place while maintaining their properties.
Around 20-24 months, many toddlers become very interested in wrapping things up (enveloping) or creating boundaries (enclosing). These schemas support developing understanding of containment, boundaries, and object permanence-the knowledge that things continue to exist even when they can’t be seen.
Later Toddlerhood (24-36 months)
As language and thinking become more sophisticated, schemas like connecting, positioning, and transformation often develop more fully. These schemas involve more complex relationships between objects and support the development of logical thinking.
A 2.5-year-old might become very interested in how things connect together, spending long periods building with blocks, using tape to connect papers, or assembling train tracks. This connecting schema supports understanding of part-whole relationships and how things can be combined to create new structures.
Around 3 years, many children develop strong interests in the positioning schema, carefully arranging objects in lines or patterns. This schema supports early mathematical thinking, including seriation (ordering), classification, and pattern recognition.
The transformation schema also becomes prominent in many children around this age, as they develop the cognitive ability to track changes over time. A 3-year-old might be fascinated with mixing colors, adding water to sand, or cooking activities where ingredients combine to make something new.
Conclusion
Schema play offers a fascinating window into the developing minds of toddlers. By recognizing these repeated patterns of behavior as valuable learning experiences rather than random or disruptive actions, we can better support children’s natural cognitive development.
Understanding schema play helps us see the purpose behind behaviors that might otherwise seem puzzling or frustrating. When we know that a toddler repeatedly throwing objects is exploring the trajectory schema, or that constant wrapping of toys indicates an enveloping schema, we can respond appropriately with supportive environments and experiences rather than mere restriction.
The evidence is clear: schema play is not just playing-it’s serious learning through which toddlers build foundational understanding of physics, mathematics, spatial relationships, and logical thinking. By supporting schema play through careful observation, thoughtful provision of materials, and appropriate interaction, we help toddlers construct the cognitive frameworks they’ll use throughout their lives.
So the next time you see a toddler engaged in repetitive play-spinning in circles, lining up toys, or filling and dumping containers-remember that you’re witnessing not just play, but the building of a mind, one schema at a time.
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