What is the Orientation Schema?
In the enchanting world of childhood, play serves as the gateway to learning and growth.
In our last post, we explored Enveloping Schema (where children like to wrap things up or hide in little spaces, developing their nurturing side and giving them comfort and security ).
This Week we take a look at our fourth Schema play style: Orientation Schema, and how it helps development, and then look at some easy ways to encourage this play style for your little one.
SCHEMA DEFINITION RECAP: Schemas of Play are instinctive, repetitive ways of interacting with different objects that help kids aged between 1-3 explore and understand the world around them.
Orientation Schema is about seeing the world from different angles. Children have a natural drive to grasp the spatial dimensions of the world. They can't resist moving and positioning themselves in all sorts of orientations – crawling, climbing, rolling, and even spinning. This helps them understand distance, direction, and location and supports part of their cognitive, physical, and emotional development.
How it helps Development
The orientation schema helps children develop skills that are important for their development including:
A. Cognitive Development:
By testing distances & directions, children develop a mental map of familiar surroundings. It also improves their spatial awareness and sets a foundation for mathematical and problem-solving abilities later in life.
B. Physical Development:
The Orientation Schema encourages children to explore their surroundings through various movements like crawling, climbing, rolling, and spinning. These help develop gross muscle strength, balance, and coordination and prepare them for more complex physical challenges.
C. Problem Solving:
Successfully navigating surroundings boosts confidence, self-esteem, and a positive attitude towards exploration and learning. Children also learn a lot about cause and effect in their environment. For example, they might discover that certain movements help them reach a particular place or object. This trial-and-error learning reinforces their understanding of spatial relationships and helps refine movement.
Strategies for Encouraging Orientation Schema Development
Here are a few ways you can encourage Orientation Schema development in your kids:
1. Encourage outdoor play:
Take them out into space where they can freely explore and experiment. Places with trees they run around or hills they can roll down are perfect.
2. Use directional words
Practice directional language by using words like up, down, left, right, near, far, and around
3. Soft Play
Set up obstacle courses inside using cushions, pillows, and tunnels (cardboard boxes make good tunnels!) to challenge their orientation and problem-solving abilities.
4. Play Together:
Lie down in the shade and cloud gaze – have fun imagining weird and silly things in the clouds. Spinning in circles is another fun way to explore the space around them and develop balance and coordination and their love for playful learning.
The Orientation Schema provides a fun and exciting way for kids to learn and grow. By exploring and interacting with their environment children can develop a better understanding of space and direction. This newfound awareness sets the stage for future learning, problem-solving, and thinking skills.
Next Up: Positioning Schema