Transporting Play Pattern

Does your little one delight in taking bags with them everywhere they go, having something in their hand a lot of the time, or carrying an impossible amount of toys around? These are common clues that your child is using the Transporting pattern of play to learn about how things move around from one place to another. By recognising these patterns in your child’s play, you can help stimulate their growth by supporting their fascinations to help them learn and grow!

Since children with an interest in Transporting love to move things from one place to another, wheelbarrows, buggies, containers and shopping bags are great to help facilitate their transportation urge.

The following are ideas to support your child’s learning through their play:

• Provide ways your child can transport objects, like train sets, backpacks, buggies, trolleys, buckets of water or spades and sand. You could even hitch a trailer to their bike or tricycle to transport things while on the move
• Help extend their play by providing them toys with lots of loose parts they can carry in their hand from one place to another, appealing to their Transportation urges
• Have a picnic lunch and let your child do the packing or let them help in the garden by watering plants

Encourage your child to put their thought processes into words by creating a dialogue with them: “Oh I see you’ve moved your toy car here, where will it go next?”, “How else can we move this?” or “How many Lego pieces is that? Let’s count together”. When talking to your little one, use words that link with their Transportation fascination, like move, carry, and drive or words around amounts like all, some, many, or few to help encourage their early language, literacy and vocabulary.

Your child’s urge to move objects around the place may feel quite disruptive or messy at times, but be patient. You may need to tolerate your little one moving objects around your home, or from your home to the car or vice versa, but remember that this is simply their way of learning and understanding how their world works.

Now that you know a little more about how your child learns through play, you can support their growth. If you’d like to learn more about different patterns of play (your child may be learning through more than just one), check them out below and discover loads of fun ways to support your child’s learning.

Have fun playing and learning together!