The Power of Play and Schemas in Early Learning

Despite its acknowledged importance, UK classrooms face a tension between recognising play’s value and applying it practically. Play opportunities have experienced “marked reductions,” often because play and learning are viewed as separate entities, with play relegated to a reward rather than a core teaching approach. This report provides educators with evidence to champion play as a legitimate pedagogical method.

Children’s play extends far beyond amusement, serving as both a fundamental right (UN Convention Article 31) and a powerful learning engine that supports holistic development across language, physical, and socio-emotional domains.

Understanding play schemas is central to this challenge. These recurring behavioural patterns reveal children’s natural curiosity and learning processes, particularly for those whose play doesn’t conform to expectations. What appears as disruptive behaviour can actually indicate meaningful exploration. This perspective cultivates empathy and targeted support, creating inclusive learning environments.

This report examines the ‘transforming schema’ and demonstrates how UK teachers can harness play’s potential to support cognitive development and nurture deeper learning for every child.

Understanding Play Schemas: The Building Blocks of Cognitive Growth

What are Play Schemas? The Patterns of Exploration

At their core, play schemas are the “repeated patterns of behaviour children use to explore and learn more about their world”. These patterns can be thought of as a child’s innate curriculum or their personal scientific method for investigating how things work. Young children are constantly striving to make sense of their environment, and they achieve this by repeatedly engaging in these patterns of behaviour. Through this iterative process, children utilise their existing knowledge and experiences to construct new understandings, progressively developing and refining their schemas. These schemas become increasingly sophisticated as children encounter new learning experiences.

Piaget’s Theory: How Children Build Knowledge Through Schemas

Jean Piaget’s cognitive development theory revolutionised education by demonstrating that children construct knowledge through mental frameworks called schemas. Rather than passive recipients of information, children actively build understanding through structured mental representations of objects, concepts, and activities.

Piaget’s schema theory explains how children organise knowledge. A child’s “cat” schema might include fur, whiskers, four legs, and meowing. These mental frameworks guide how children interpret new experiences and information.

Piaget’s Assimilation and Accommodation Processes

Piaget identified two key learning mechanisms:

Assimilation occurs when new information fits existing schemas. A child seeing another furry, four-legged animal easily incorporates it into their “cat” schema without modification.

Accommodation happens when new information conflicts with existing schemas, creating cognitive disequilibrium. When a child mistakes a raccoon for a cat and learns the difference, they must modify their schema to accommodate this new knowledge.

Piaget called the balance between these processes equilibration – the continuous cycle that creates increasingly sophisticated mental representations.

Piaget’s Impact on Modern Education

Piaget’s theories, popularised in the 1960s, transformed UK classrooms from passive learning environments to activity-oriented spaces where children construct their own understanding. This shift recognised play as fundamental to cognitive development.

Play Schemas: Piaget’s Theory in Action

Children’s play schemas demonstrate Piaget’s cognitive processes in action. When children repeatedly mix substances in mud kitchens, they assimilate observations into existing “mixing” schemas and accommodate unexpected results. This elevates play from recreation to essential cognitive construction.

Dynamic Schema Development

Schema development involves continuous refinement rather than linear progression. As children encounter new experiences, their schemas become more sophisticated, requiring ongoing assimilation and accommodation.

Educators must therefore provide responsive, flexible teaching that observes children’s evolving interests and offers increasingly complex materials for deeper exploration. This approach ensures learning remains developmentally appropriate while developing intrinsic motivation and sustained engagement.

The Transforming Schema: Change in Action

Defining the Transforming Schema: More Than Just Messy Play

The transforming schema focuses on change – how materials alter in substance, appearance, colour, or consistency. Children exploring this schema are fascinated by combining and manipulating materials to observe transformations.

Teachers can identify children engaged in transforming schemas through these observable behaviours:

• Sand and water mixing – experimenting with different consistencies
• Body, face, finger painting – fascinated by changing their appearance
• Colour mixing – combining paints to create new hues
• Messy play engagement – making ‘potions’ and mud kitchen experiments

Children displaying transforming schemas are driven by curiosity about how objects change when materials are combined or manipulated, making this schema fundamental to early scientific thinking and creative exploration.

Why the Transforming Schema Matters

Children exploring the transforming schema aren’t just making mess – they’re actively examining material properties and understanding change. This play delivers significant developmental benefits:

Key Skills and Learning Outcomes

• Fine Motor Development: Mixing, stirring, and pouring refine hand-eye coordination and muscle control
• Cause and Effect Understanding: Children discover how specific actions create predictable results, building logical thinking
• Scientific Observation Skills: Using sight, touch, smell, and sound to notice texture, colour, and consistency changes
• Creative and Critical Thinking: Experimenting encourages idea generation, problem-solving, and testing solutions through trial and error
• Science and Maths Foundations: Natural alignment with materials and properties concepts, plus skills in predicting, estimating, and measuring

Supporting Vocabulary: Teachers can extend learning by introducing terms like: change, transform, material, object, appearance, mix, stir, combine, size, position, shape, texture, property.

Gateway to Scientific Inquiry: The transforming schema serves as children’s natural entry into scientific thinking. Rather than viewing messy play as inconvenient, teachersn can recognise it as productive scientific exploration where children act as young scientists driven by curiosity.

This inherent drive allows organic introduction of scientific vocabulary and concepts, moving beyond abstract instruction to create deep, experiential understanding. The schema provides compelling justification for dedicating time and resources to open-ended, sensory-rich play as fundamental to scientific literacy.

Mathematical Connections: Transforming play naturally incorporates quantity, volume, and measurement principles. Children estimate water amounts for mud pies, count potion ingredients, and observe size and shape changes, actively engaging with foundational mathematical concepts through hands-on experience.

Bringing Transformation to Life: Practical Play-Based Activities for Your Classroom

General Approach: Hands-On, Open-Ended Exploration

The most effective way to support children developing their transforming schema is by offering a rich array of hands-on, playful investigations. Crucially, this involves providing open-ended materials and loose parts that children can manipulate and combine in countless ways, developing creativity and problem-solving.

Sensory Explorations: The Magic of Changing Textures

Many transforming activities naturally occur within sensory play, where children learn about the world through their senses. While often messy, the benefits are immense:

• Goop (Cornflour + Water): A classic for a reason. Made by adding water to cornflour (with optional food colouring), goop constantly transforms from a runny liquid to a solid when pressure is applied, fascinating children interested in changing materials.
• Cloud Dough (Cornflour + Hair Conditioner): Combining these two creates a soft, light powder that can be transformed into a playdough-like mixture by adjusting the conditioner, with food colouring adding another layer of transformation.
• Water Beads: These start as tiny, hard beads and dramatically expand into large, soft, jelly-like balls when water is added. Children enjoy squashing them and observing their transformation. Placing glow sticks or fairy lights underneath can further alter their appearance.

Creative Alchemy: Mixing Colours, Art, and Mark Making

Children with a transforming schema are naturally drawn to mixing colours. We have a post of 6 transforming schema art activities. Providing opportunities with:

• Paint, Coloured Water, or Cellophane: Encouraging experimentation with different mediums. Using pipettes for coloured water mixing not only demonstrates colour transformation but also strengthens fine motor skills. A light table can beautifully highlight the transformation process.
• Handprints: A traditional art activity, often enjoyed by children who like painting on themselves, allowing them to see the transformation of paint from a blob to a distinct hand shape.

Kitchen Science & Mud Play: Everyday Transformations

These areas are essential for supporting the transforming schema, promoting rich, messy, and engaging play:

• Mud Kitchens: An essential resource for children exploring transformation. Here, sand, soil, bark chips, plant cuttings, and water are combined with tools like saucepans, cups, spoons, and whisks to mix, stir, and create ‘mud pies’ and ‘potions’. A mortar and pestle is an excellent addition for grinding leaves and bark into powder, further developing fine motor skills.
• Potions and Kitchen Science: Setting up an indoor ‘chemistry lab’ with pantry ingredients. Bicarbonate of soda and vinegar create exciting, visible reactions. Children can also transform chalk from a solid into powder, then into putty or paint by adding water.
• Perfume Making: Inspired by everyday experiences, children can mix scented flowers, herbs, oil, and water to create their own ‘perfumes’, observing the transformation of ingredients into a new product.
• Making Sensory Bottles: Tall, clear bottles filled with water, clear glue/gel/oil, and food colouring, along with tiny materials like glitter or beads. Shaking them allows children to observe the materials mix and then slowly separate, a calming visual transformation.

Loose Parts Play: Endless Possibilities for Change

Loose parts are the ultimate open-ended resource, allowing children to explore and experiment in countless ways³ Children interested in transformation will spontaneously use loose parts (stones, sticks, buttons, fabric) to create and transform them into familiar objects – a wood slice becomes food, a block of wood becomes a phone. Adding loose parts to playdough, for instance, encourages children to make marks and transform its appearance.

Loose parts play emerges as a particularly powerful and efficient pedagogical strategy for fostering schema exploration, especially the transforming schema. These flexible and open-ended materials empower children to initiate their own transformations, experiment with different combinations, and explore concepts of change in highly individualised and imaginative ways.³ The inherent versatility of loose parts means they are not merely one type of activity, but rather a foundational framework that enables children to enact multiple schemas simultaneously. Prioritising the provision of a diverse collection of loose parts reduces the need for prescriptive, single-use resources, instead promoting sustained, child-led exploration that naturally supports the transforming schema. This approach aligns seamlessly with principles of active learning and critical thinking, as children are continuously problem-solving and generating novel ideas with the materials at hand.¹¹

Observing Slower Transformations: The Wonders of Growth and Cycles

Transformation isn’t always instant. Providing opportunities to observe slower, ongoing changes is equally valuable:

• Planting Seeds: A classic science activity where children observe the gradual transformation of a tiny seed into a seedling and then a plant.
• Life Cycles: Observing the life cycles of living things with relatively quick transformations, such as frogs, silkworms, or mealworms, offers fascinating insights into change over time.

The diverse range of activities that support the transforming schema offers a spectrum of experiences, from immediate, tangible changes to slower, long-term transformations. Activities like mixing goop or paint provide instant feedback on cause and effect, catering to a child’s desire for immediate discovery.⁵ Conversely, planting seeds or observing life cycles fosters patience and sustained observation of gradual, ongoing changes.⁵ This variety ensures that the concept of change is explored across different timescales, accommodating diverse learning paces and interests. By offering both rapid and protracted transformation activities, educators can create a rich and differentiated learning environment, ensuring that all children can engage with the concept of change in ways that resonate with their individual developmental stage and curiosity. This approach also facilitates deeper cross-curricular connections, extending learning beyond pure science into areas such as nature studies and understanding growth.

Dress-up Clothes in Home Corner: Transforming Themselves

The home corner, equipped with hats, masks, scarves, and bags, allows children to engage in role-play and learn about transforming themselves into different characters, exploring identity and imagination.

Transforming Schema Curriculum Activities at a Glance

Activity Name	Key Materials Needed	Primary Transformational Aspect	Key Learning Outcomes/Skills	Relevant UK Curriculum Links (EYFS/Primary)
Goop Making	Cornflour, water, food colouring	Solid to liquid, consistency change	Sensory exploration, cause & effect, fine motor, predicting	Expressive Arts & Design, Understanding the World: Materials
Mud Kitchen	Sand, soil, water, utensils, plant cuttings	Mixing substances, creating new forms	Fine motor, cause & effect, scientific observation, imaginative play	Understanding the World: Materials, Expressive Arts & Design
Colour Mixing	Paints, coloured water, pipettes, light table	Colour blending, new hues	Colour theory, fine motor, observation, creative expression	Expressive Arts & Design
Planting Seeds	Seeds, soil, pots, water	Growth from seed to plant	Life cycles, patience, scientific observation, understanding growth	Science: Living Things
Loose Parts Play	Stones, sticks, fabric, buttons, wood slices	Creative transformation into new objects/forms	Creativity, problem-solving, imaginative play, fine motor	Expressive Arts & Design, Understanding the World

Creating Accessible Environments for Transformative Play

Teachers can intentionally design environments and activities that are accessible and engaging for all learners, channelling natural behaviours into rich learning opportunities.

• Adapt Activities: For children exploring posting, offering clear tubes with collection trays allows them to observe items travel and retrieve them easily, or providing posting boxes with varied slot sizes challenges fine motor skills. Ball runs and water play with pouring also provide controlled trajectory experiences.
• Support Communication: Incorporating visual schedules designate when specific activities are available, and using signs or symbols (like “finished” or “more”) during play, can significantly aid communication. Integrating cause-and-effect vocabulary reinforces understanding of actions and outcomes.
• Open-Ended Materials: Continuing to provide a variety of open-ended materials ensures children can explore at their own pace and in their own unique style. This inherent flexibility of play-based learning naturally supports differentiated instruction.

A powerful synergy exists between play-based learning, schema development, and the principles of inclusive education. Inclusive education seeks to provide equal access and tailored instruction for all students, regardless of their diverse needs. The open-ended, child-led nature of play, guided by a child’s individual schema interests, inherently facilitates differentiation without the need for explicit, separate instruction for each learner. For example, a single mud kitchen setup, supporting the transforming schema, allows one child to refine fine motor skills, another to explore cause-and-effect relationships, and a third to engage in imaginative role-play, all within the same activity. This means that play-based learning is not merely a beneficial pedagogical practice; it is a core, highly effective strategy for building genuinely inclusive classrooms. It allows educators to meet diverse needs organically, fostering a sense of belonging and success for all children, and provides a compelling argument for integrating play more deeply into the UK curriculum as a practical tool for differentiated instruction and SEN support.

Inclusiveteach.com Your Resource for Inclusive Schema Play

Inclusiveteach.com is a valuable hub dedicated to transforming education through inclusivity and supporting children with diverse needs.Their extensive collection of articles and resources can further empower educators in creating truly inclusive learning environments:

• Understanding Inclusive Education: For a comprehensive overview of the benefits and challenges of inclusive education, which underpins the philosophy of supporting all learners through schema play, explore “Inclusive Education: Benefits and Challenges” and “Inclusion in Education: Multiple Perspectives“. These articles highlight advantages such as social integration, academic progress, and the development of empathy among all students.
• Supporting Specific Schema Interests: To delve deeper into how specific schemas are supported, particularly for autistic children, practical activities and insights can be found in “The Trajectory Play Schema: Understanding the Fascination with Movement in Children“.
• Addressing Specific Behaviours: For insights into behaviours like compulsive posting, which often align with schemas, “Understanding Compulsive Posting in Autistic Children Through Play Schemas” provides concrete strategies for channelling these behaviours into constructive learning.
• General EYFS Exploration and Cognitive Development: For broader guidance on encouraging exploration, critical thinking, and cognitive growth in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), which forms the bedrock of schema development, educators can refer to “Unlocking the Potential of EYFS Children: Encouraging Exploration” and “Object Permanence: The Role in Child Development“, which links schema to foundational cognitive milestones.

Conclusion: Empowering Children to Transform Their World

The exploration has illuminated the fascinating world of the transforming schema – a fundamental drive in children to understand how things change in substance and appearance. Rooted in Piaget’s foundational theories of assimilation and accommodation, this innate curiosity serves as the engine of cognitive growth, allowing children to actively construct their understanding of the world. Through hands-on, open-ended play, children engaged in the transforming schema are not merely playing; they are developing crucial fine motor skills, grasping cause-and-effect relationships, making scientific observations, and honing their creative and critical thinking abilities. From the immediate wonders of goop and colour mixing to the slower magic of planting seeds, every activity offers a rich tapestry of learning.

The early operational schemes in children’s play are the foundational, pre-requisite skills for later complex operations like reading, writing, and advanced mathematics. By embracing the transforming schema through play, educators are not just supporting immediate developmental milestones; they are laying robust cognitive foundations for lifelong learning and well-being. As UK teachers, individuals are uniquely positioned to be facilitators of this profound learning. By observing children’s persistent interests, providing rich, open-ended environments, and championing the value of play, educators empower children to actively transform their understanding of the world, one joyful exploration at a time.

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