“Lovely friendly staff who bond and grow as your child moves through the classes. Still can’t believe how attached my daughter is to all the girls.”
CHILD-LED ACTIVITIES
LOOSE PARTS PLAY
Loose parts are materials that can be moved, taken apart, lined up, carried and completely re-designed to make something else. They can be natural resources like mud, straw, stones and pine cones, scrap materials such as tyres, guttering, cable drums, or just random objects that we as adults would class as junk!
To a child, these provide endless possibilities in their play. Toys with defined uses can be prescriptive and can result in repetitive play, loose parts allow the play to come from the child and become anything they want them to be – tyres can be rolled, and stacked, and balanced on, and made into a fort, and imagined as a boat, and more…
THE BENEFITS
Here at Castlegate, we know that using loose parts in their play really support children to explore their naturally amazing imaginations and encourage them to develop their problem-solving skills. They think up new ways to make a garage with ramps for their cars or use old tyres, palettes and cable drums to make their own dens.
In the past, we would have provided them with a car garage for their cars or a pre-made den, but now that loose parts play is embedded in our practice we can recognise that we were potentially limiting their play skills and creativity by giving them ‘ready-made, defined use toys. The children are now more focused and are able to use their own skills and creativity to fully delve into their learning while at Castlegate, and build some brilliant team working skills with their friends at the same time.
THE EVIDENCE
An architect called Simon Nicolson first proposed the theory of ‘loose parts’ in the 1970s – he believed that loose parts materials that can be moved around, designed, redesigned and tinkered with create lots of opportunities for creativity. Children’s brains are naturally creative and inquisitive, and at Castlegate we believe in supporting children to flourish freely in their play, with loose parts providing the ideal basis for this to happen.
There are brilliant resources explaining more about Loose Part Play:
- Loose Parts Play, A toolkit https://www.inspiringscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Loose-Parts-Play-web.pdf
The following videos are also highlighted in the toolkit:
- Scrapstore Playpod® http://tinyurl.com/ScrapstorePod
- Imagination Playground in a Box http://tinyurl.com/PlaygroundBox
- Natural Play in Schools (Grounds for Learning) http://tinyurl.com/NaturalPlayGfL