The Transporting Schema
Children exploring a transporting schema will have a fascination with moving themselves or objects from one place to another. They may enjoy lling baskets, rucksacks, wheelbarrows and containers so they can move and scatter items or place them somewhere else. This schema is largely down to a child’s own experiences of being transported in cars, prams and being carried by a parent or carer.
Providing the right environment for transporting schemas
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There are lots of items you can add to your continuous provision for transporters: prams and trolleys in the role play area, old rucksacks and handbags alongside lots of loose parts for moving around.
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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.
Sensory and messy play ideas
Allow children to move items around the setting. You can provide lots of containers, utensils and jugs alongside:
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Sand
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Water
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Shaving foam
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Dried pasta
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Soapy water
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Slime
Mark making ideas
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Create maps of your outdoor area with the children. Once the map is completed they can transport items to different spots on the map.
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Create a chalk walkway for transporting ingredients to the mud kitchen.
Maths Ideas
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Mud Kitchen Collectors
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For children with a transporting schema try placing mud kitchen ingredients away from the mud kitchen and provide lots of di erent resources for them to collect items.
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What you need:
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Wheelbarrow
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Pull along trailer
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Crate with wheels
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Utensils
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Containers with handles
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What to do:
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Children can explore their transporting schema in a number of ways by using different items to collect and transport ingredients to the mud kitchen. They can collect sand, mud, water, leaves and much more from the outdoor environment.
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The mud kitchen has endless opportunities for talking about shape, space, measure and number. When collecting resources, you can talk to the children about how much they need and how they are going to collect the ‘ingredients’.
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Encourage the children to think about what size the items they are using to transport with need to be.
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You can time the children as they collect ingredients and in addition to modelling and encouraging the use of lots of mathematical language.