Schemas and “Sensitive Periods” in Early Childhood
One of my favorite things about working in early childhood is watching young children make sense of the world. As adults, we have so much worldly experience and knowledge about what’s “normal” or “common.” We’re not marveled by the simple things because they’re so common for us. But for a young child with so little life experience, just the action of pouring something from one container to the other is such an engaging task. These simple tasks that so many of our wBees do daily may seem straightforward at face value, but in reality, they are a crucial part of your child’s development, driven by something called “schemas.” Understanding these schemas can help one engage more deeply and meaningfully with a child to support their cognitive growth.
Schemas
Schemas are recurring patterns or themes in a child’s play, thoughts, and behaviors. They serve a fundamental purpose in your child’s early cognitive development by helping them explore and understand the world around them. These schemas are likely mental building blocks that children use to make sense of their environment, and each schema has a unique purpose and significance.
Common Schemas in Early Childhood:
Transportation Schema:
This schema helps children explore the concepts of direction, distance, and speed and enhances their spatial awareness and problem-solving.
You’ll notice that many of our classrooms, especially the Seedlings classroom, tend to begin with the theme of transportation at the beginning of the year. We know how much children love things that “go” and how enticing and familiar books, puzzles, and toys of vehicles and cars are to young children. Having a common theme that children are highly interested in allows them to feel more engaged in a new environment.
Rotation Schema:
This schema helps children understand the concepts of rotation, symmetry, and balance. It is also excellent for enhancing fine & gross motor skills and spatial intelligence. This is related to the vestibular sense as well, particularly when it comes to the movement of the child’s body.
You’ll notice your child might enjoy spinning or things that rotate, like door knobs, wheels, buttons, or levers. Swivel chairs and Bilibo chairs are fantastic for this and also give significant vestibular input to the sensory system.
Enclosure Schema:
Children explore the concept of containment, boundaries, and shelter through this schema. They also enhance their understanding of space, privacy, and security. In the early months, this relates to object permanence in babies.
This is the fort building with blankets and cushions, the complex three-dimensional building with blocks and other objects, and the interest in open and close toys. This pairs well with fine motor skills, as you can practice this with various containers and ways to open and close things (latches, keys, doors, etc.)
Trajectory Schema
Through the trajectory schema, children learn about cause and effect properties of various materials, and they practice skills such as fine-tuning their visual tracking skills (which translates to reading!) and the skill of observing and predicting.
Children who repeatedly engage in actions like throwing objects into a container of water, dropping things off a ledge,
While sometimes it can feel frustrating when children engage in this schema, it’s genuinely them exploring and experimenting. It’s important to give children appropriate ways to engage in these schemas, like our sensory bins that cater to this type of exploration or appropriate spaces for children to throw, play with water, and other “messy” or “reckless” actions that they’re really interested in.
Other schemas include connecting, orientation, positioning, enveloping, and more.
A child’s understanding of a schema’s physical manifestation allows them to take it a step further into more abstract applications.
Sensitive Periods in Early Childhood
Sensitive periods refer to specific windows of time in a child’s development during which they are highly receptive to learning and mastering particular skills or concepts. These periods are marked by heightened sensitivity and a natural inclination to explore and absorb knowledge in a specific area.
Some common sensitive periods in early childhood are:
Language development, order, sensory discrimination, small object manipulation (which is why we love our tiny objects in the classroom!), and social interactions.
Both schemas and sensitive periods play crucial roles in a child’s developmental journey. They provide a structured framework for learning and exploration that is natural to a child’s interests.
In both cases, repetition is vital. Children will repeat activities related to schemas or exhibit intense interest in a particular area during a sensitive period. When your child is trying to master a skill, your teaching team will likely continuously discuss the importance of repetition. Doing things over and over again is essential to ingrain the process entirely.
The Montessori Method and Schemas / Sensitive Periods
In our classrooms, the teachers pay particular attention to the type of play and interests that are sprouting amongst the group. Apart from taking their thematic interests into account (fascination with trains, love of space, interest in mushrooms, adoration of nature treasures), they also pay attention to what schemas are showing up for the students to inform the types of works on the shelves. We really capitalize on sensitive periods in our classrooms by constantly designing linguistically rich environments during this early period of language growth, providing ample opportunities for the practice of order and independence through our practical life shelf and self-care and care of the environment, and, of course our wonderful sensory materials that extend far beyond the sensorial shelf but also include the sensory bins, sensory tools, and all of the very intentional materiality of the objects we use in the classroom (metal, ceramic, glass, wood, etc.).
