Picture this: Your little one is mimicking a doctor to treat their toys or mimicking a teacher and scolding their toys. Or when your baby is arranging cushions to create a continuous path across the room or lining their toys to form a long chain. Sometimes, what may seem like a random act or thoughtless creativity is actually your child’s way of engaging in small but purposeful actions.
When they link different objects or people, they are learning to create paths from here to there through various activities, and slowly developing their interest in building connections. This natural urge to connect is part of their developmental process known as the connecting schema, a foundational way children make sense of their surroundings.
What are play schemas?
The repetitive behavioural and play patterns of your child are known as play schemas and they are crucial for understanding how children explore and understand the world around them. These schemas are not just important for understanding our children but also designing and developing the correct activities and materials for them to develop early learning.
Children also develop essential cognitive, social, and physical skills in connection to the play schemas in early childhood.
Learn more about schemas in detail here.
What is the Connecting Schema?
The connection schema is essentially your child’s natural tendency to explore and understand relationships between objects, people, and ideas. In the context of play and learn, the connection schema is an important part of early childhood development and focuses on how children naturally aim to create connections and links in their environment, both physically and socially.
Even when your child is mimicking adult roles and enacting what they generally watch you or others do, they are being driven by their natural learning instincts. They are trying to make sense of how things connect-relationships, actions, or people in general. By imitating adult behaviours, they are experimenting with different social roles and language.
Through these various acts, they try to understand how different different things relate to one another and also the different consequences of their actions. This tendency often makes them form chains with peers or engage in various activities that involve experimenting. Through exploration, interaction, and play, they learn to make sense of their environment and become naturally curious.
When does the connecting schema occur?
Ideally, the connection schema starts to occur in early childhood, around the ages of 18 months to 4 years, as children begin to engage more deeply in exploratory play. They show interest in stacking toys, building blocks, linking toys, and forming chains with different materials, and these activities build foundational skills that support later learning in mathematics, science, and social-emotional development.
They increasingly indulge in symbolic play and imaginative scenarios to explore connections and as they grow older, they learn to interpret connections using more complex ways such as creating narratives involving different characters who interact with one another. It is wonderful to watch your little ones make connections and later apply them to their understanding of the world around them.
What are the behavioural indicators of the connecting schema?
There are many actions and patterns of play through which you can understand if your child is engaging in the connecting schema. Here are some of the key ways in which they show signs of this particular play schema:
Building pathways: They might construct pathways or bridges using blocks, Lego, or other materials, illustrating their interest in creating links between objects.
Linking objects: One of the most common signs is their frequent engagement in activities that involve connecting or linking objects, such as stringing beads, joining toy train cars, or stacking blocks in a sequence.
Creating groups: They often create chains or groups with toys or materials, which demonstrates their interest in understanding how items can be connected physically.
Imitating relationships: Your child may mimic relationships they observe in their environment, such as pretending to be connected to family members or friends in their imaginative play.
Exploring cause and effect: They might show curiosity by repeating certain actions and observing their outcomes, like pushing a toy to see how far it rolls.
What skills do they develop by indulging in the connecting schema?
The occurrence of schemas in early childhood is an essential marker of developmental milestones. Children develop a variety of important skills that are foundational for their overall growth and learning. Here are some key skills that your child is developing:
Cognitive skills: As children explore how objects relate to one another, recognize patterns, and experiment with different connections, they learn problem-solving abilities and critical thinking. The connecting schema is a wonderful way of fostering these cognitive skills that support brain development.
Fine motor skills: When your child manipulates various small objects to create links or connections, they refine their fine motor skills, which further builds their hand-eye coordination and dexterity.
Social skill: An underrated but necessary skill, the connecting schema helps develop necessary social skills through cooperative play and forming connections with peers. Children develop social skills like communication, sharing, empathy, and teamwork, and these strengthens their ability to build relationships in the future.
Spatial awareness: As children build pathways, link objects, or create structures, they develop an understanding of spatial relationships, distances, and how objects interact in different spaces.
Montessori activities that support the connecting schema
Here are some Montessori activities that effectively support the connecting schema, allowing children to explore relationships and connections in various ways:
Stringing beads: Provide your child with different types of beads to string together. This activity will help them enhance fine motor skills while exploring patterns, colours, and relationships between the beads.
Nature walk: Take your child on nature walks to collect items like leaves, sticks, or stones. Once they are back, encourage them to arrange the items in different patterns or connect them to create a nature collage.
Puzzle play: Offer them with puzzles that require your child to connect different pieces to form a complete picture. With this activity, your child will be able to understand spatial relationships and also develop problem-solving abilities.
Imaginative play with dolls or action figures: Encourage your child to create scenarios using dolls or action figures, and focus on relationships and interactions. It will help them develop social and emotional skills through the connecting schema.
Sorting and categorising: Provide a variety of objects to sort and categorize based on different criteria, such as colour, size, or shape. This activity will encourage them to make connections between similar items and enhance their cognitive skills.
Block building: Offer a variety of blocks, including different shapes and sizes, for children to stack and connect. They can create structures, bridges, or pathways, and this will build their sense of spatial awareness and problem-solving skills.
List of words that support the connecting schema
Build, join, link, together, chain, path, connect, attach, sequence, thread, group, gather, combine, pattern, relation, unite, pair, assemble, fit, line, separate, apart, bridge.
How do we communicate the understanding of the connecting schema through language?
Use these phrases with your child when engaging in various activities that support the connection schema for them to better understand and be encouraged to explore the concept:
Descriptive language: “Let’s connect these blocks to make a bridge.”
Everyday context: “Just like when we hold hands to form a circle, we can connect these objects together.”
Narrative language: “I see you’re linking all the toy trains together. They’re forming a long line that moves together.”
Encouraging questions: “What will happen if we connect these two pieces?”
Cause and effect: “When we connect all these cars, they move together as a train. See how they follow each other?”
Here are some more specific examples using the words from the list shared above:
Bridge: “We can use these blocks to build a bridge that connects one side of the room to the other.”
Together: “When we put these pieces together, they make a big, colourful picture.”
Sequence: “Arrange the blocks in a sequence from smallest to largest to make a line.”
Group: “Let’s group the red and blue blocks together to see the different colours side by side.”
Combine: “Combine these shapes, and you’ll see how they make a new pattern.”
For activity ideas to support your child’s schemas, check out our Play Schema Cards.