You may be wondering if you have a baby or a small toddler in one of our campuses, how we use schemas to help their development. We talked to one of the educators at our Deception Bay campus about using schemas for educational programming. Deception Bay Little Scholars was recently rated as Exceeding the National Quality Standard (NQS) after it was assessed by the Department of Education. The NQS sets a high national benchmark for early childhood education and care in Australia. Jodie, lead educator in the nursery studio, says learning about schemas was a game-changer.

• Q: When did you first learn about schemas?
  A: I first heard about schematic play by attending a professional development webinar with Semann & Slattery. It resonated with me as I had observed children engage in the different schemas, but didn’t know about schematic play. I found it so intriguing and needed to do more research. I found Jean Piaget’s psychology theory; “while a schema in psychology still refers to how information is organized, it focuses on how the human mind does it”. I have now learnt the what, why and how children learn through repeated patterns of behaviour.
• Q: How long have you worked with nursery children? What were your interactions like before?
  A: I have worked in the industry coming up to 14 years and only in the past four years, I have engaged in a more full-time educating role with the nursery and toddler-aged children. Prior to this, I struggled with understanding this age group on the emphasis of what, why and how this age group do things so differently, developmentally, and emotionally. Especially toddlers as they are so spontaneous and busy, and how I could best support them as an educator. It wasn’t until I had my second child, who was so vastly different to my first child! She was much more inquisitive, very busy and just like a little tornado ripping through the house. She was never content until she had everything out on the floor! For the most part she never sat and engaged with her toys, (like my first child did). However, could sit very quietly and go unnoticed at times, especially when she would discover the creams on the change table, or the dirt and mud in the backyard while I hung out the washing.
  [After learning about schema theory] I was able to resonate with this from my daughter’s tornado toddler years. That it seemed she wasn’t content until she had gone around and pulled everything out, to not even play with any of it, but just move it from place to place. When in fact she was learning! She was learning about horizontal trajectory (dropping objects), vertical trajectory (throwing, pulling, pushing, pointing, climbing) and transporting (moving objects from place to place).
• Q: How has your knowledge of schemas adjusted how you spend time with babies and toddlers?
  A: With the support and guidance from Susan, I have since adapted Jean Piaget’s schema theory into our collective educational program. By adapting this theory, we have been able to slow down and become more in tune to the children and noticing their behaviour patterns in play. It is now so important to us that we allow our babies and young children the time to explore the repetitive actions of schematic play. Allowing our babies to construct meaning in what they are doing, as babies and young children learn best through, opportunities to engage in active learning through hands on experiences. These opportunities allow babies and children to problem solve, question, predict, imagine, speculate, and develop independent choices as they make decisions in an area, they are familiar with.
• Q: How do you see schema theory in action in your nursery?
  A: Our younger babies spend a lot of their time engaging in trajectory play. They can be observed doing tummy time, reaching out for objects, kicking their legs, opening and closing their hands, grasping objects, waving arms up and down or side to side. Then onto rolling, sitting, and crawling where their patterns of movement emerge to larger body movements in horizontal and vertical lines e.g., pushing, kicking pointing, rocking, climbing, or stepping up and down as they work towards their important milestone of walking (horizontal trajectory).

Both our younger babies and older babies really enjoy dropping objects or putting things in and out of containers (vertical trajectory). Using old formula tins and cutting an opening in the top with lids from jar foods a milk bottle lids, is a big favourite.

Our older babies are seen continuing with trajectory and begin to start exploring other forms of schematic play like, transporting, rotation, connecting  and this can lead to a disconnecting schema where the child builds something that they can demolish or through [activities like] untying knots, as well as enclosing, positioning, enveloping and orientation, such as looking at things from different viewpoints like hanging upside down, looking through their legs, looking at things upside down. No wonder our little people are so busy and on the go all the time!

Thanks, Jodie!

Related:

Pedagogical Practices: Bringing new learning techniques to Little Scholars