Why does my child move things around all the time?

The transporter schema explained

Is your child always carrying toys from one place to another? Is their dolls’ pram always full of teddies or their bags full of bricks? If so, then your child is exploring their transportation schema. Children who have transportation schemas like to move items and themselves from A to B – it’s a simple as that. 

To support a blossoming transportation schema, you could try providing your child with useful transport tools to enjoy:

• Containers

• Pushchairs

• Bikes

• Baskets

• Bags

• Wheelbarrows

Having a transporter around can be very useful. They will love helping you unpack the shopping, put all the oranges in the fruit bowl, or take the toilet rolls upstairs, so get them involved with jobs!

Transporting schemas support children’s understanding of quantity and permanence of objects, investigating whether if they move things, are they still the same things and is there still the same amount?

With a little creativity, you are able to support a much broader range of learning outcomes. For example, gardening and water play are also great opportunities to explore transporting- by providing wheelbarrows and buckets, you will be developing children’s gross motor skills and building up their vital upper arm muscles ready for writing. 
Or, by providing smaller items for smaller fingers, such as conkers, acorns or pebbles, you’ll add an element of fine motor development and get them exploring nature too. 

While it’s true that transporting children can be the bane of a tidy house, moving all your prized possessions around the house, channelled the right way, a transporter can be your best friend and helper too.