Transporting Schema

Transporting schema involves moving objects from place to place with ramps, bags, buckets, pipes, tubes, jugs, and more and typically develops between the ages of 2 and 4. This schema may interest children because they’re so accustomed to be transported from place to place by adults.

According to Laura England, “It’s important that the environment is flexible for transporters and that practitioners aren’t too precious about where items live. You might spend hours setting up a small world area for one child to collect all the figures in a bag and distribute them around the room but you have to remember that they are learning.”¹ Luckily, children interested in transporting schema frequently enjoy cleanup time since it involves hauling items back to their homes.

Suggested Loose Parts

Here’s an incomplete list of loose parts that support transporting schema play:

Have an idea I should add to the list? Share it in the comments or contact me.

Examples

Here are some examples of transporting schema play in action:

Make sure to provide children with big things to transport. It’s an opportunity to do heavy work, an activity that involves pushing, pulling, and carrying. Wagons, two wheel carts, and wheelbarrows are popular with kids wanting to move large items–or mountains of smaller ones.

Trains, with and without tracks, are popular with children interested in transporting schema. As are other pull toys and toys with wheels that they can drive from place to place. Ramps are also popular with children interested in transporting schema.

A plastic bucket and lots of something to move can keep a child interested in transporting schema busy for hours. Back in my family child care days, kids would be bursting with energy whenever my buddy Lee pulled up in his dump truck with a fresh load of sand, rocks, or dirt for the play area. They’d all grab containers and get to work hauling the material from the driveway to the play area. Then they’d eat lunch, sleep deep and long, gobble their snack, and get back to their work.

Installing a classroom pulley system as described at this link is another simple way to support children interested in exploring transporting schema. It’s also another chance for heavy work, an introduction to one of the 6 classic simple machines, and a great workout for little shoulders, arms, and backs.

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1. England, Laura. Schemas: A Practical Handbook (p. 73). Bloomsbury Publishing. Kindle Edition.