Nursery World - Essential Resources: Schemes, Connecting

In the last in this series on schemes, Nicole Weinstein looks at resources for the connecting scheme

When children have a repeated interest in connecting pieces of train track together, joining together cardboard boxes or sticking Sellotape to paper, the chances are they are exploring the connecting scheme.

Children with this scheme are also likely to knock down their constructions or take apart their carefully threaded pasta-tube necklaces in an effort to explore disconnection.

Lynnette Brock, director of SchemaPlay, says, ‘Observing children’s schemes, rather than simply looking at the resources as an interest, can help early years educators to effectively “seed” resources that are attuned to the child’s explorational interests.

‘By asking questions such as, “What are they finding out about through their operations and actions? Could it be that two things can connect? Or has this developed further and the child is investigating length, height, or that two or three objects can create one, such as two triangles forming a diamond?”, we can provide or “seed” the right resources to further the child’s interest in the scheme.’

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