CAN YOU EVEN HAVE PLAY WITHOUT LOOSE PARTS?

Let’s dive into the idea of connecting play and loose parts. So I’ve been having a really big question in my head of, can you even have play without loose parts?

Understanding these connections will allow you to focus on the exact type of play and the kinds of variables children use to explore that play.  Ultimately creating a better planning experience!

To unpack this question, I thought I would go back to the basics of “What is play.?”

PLAY DEFINED

Play is intrinsically motivated, it is engaging in an activity or experience for your own pure enjoyment.

So for children, a lot of this can look like just building towers, or running cars down a ramp, or just playing a game of chase.

For adults, our play can look more like dabbling with different ingredients in the kitchen by not following a recipe, or it can look like us going outside and engaging in a walk or a hike or engaging in some social interactions with your friends.

WHAT EXACTLY ARE LOOSE PARTS

When you look at what loose parts are, Simon Nicholson, he talks about how any person can be creative if you have the right kind a number of variables in your environment. So those are the things that he talks about that are those parts. So these variables are typically categorized into about seven or eight different things, such as

• wood
• metal
• packaging
• natural materials
• fabric
• glass, and ceramics
• plastic

ADDITIONAL VARIABLES THAT ARE LOOSE PARTS

The not so talked about variables, which are just as important include:

• plants and animals,
• motion, gases and fluids,
• chemical reactions,
• your own thoughts, ideas, and words are considered loose parts as well.

16 TYPES OF PLAY & HOW LOOSE PARTS PLAY A ROLE

So when you’re looking at play, and you’re looking at loose parts, I thought how, let’s look into this connection a little bit deeper. And what brought me to that was the 16 different types of play that Bob Hughes has been writing about.

When you go further in depth within the 16 different types, {and by the way, there is a cheat sheet that you can download, with those 16 different types of plate attached to this blog as well.}

Looking at these 16 different types of play, you’ll really start to see how loose parts are deeply connected to this and that children would not be able to engage in these types of play without loose parts.

SYMBOLIC PLAY AND LOOSE PARTS

For example, there is symbolic play. So this is where children are really just starting to dabble with the idea of taking an object and looking at how it can be used a little bit differently.

Examples of this would be taking a piece of wood and pretending it that it’s a person or having a piece of string and wrapping around their finger, and it’s a wedding ring.

This very simple play, but those items, the wood and the string come from the different types of loose parts, the different kinds of variables that you have within your environment.

EXPLORATORY PLAY AND LOOSE PARTS

Now let’s look, let’s look at another type of play, exploratory play.

This is where children are using their senses and engaging in discovering different objects within their play. And loose parts are filled with different sensory stimulation in them.

Fabrics have different textures, containers might have different weights, different like metal pieces might have different sounds, the chemical reactions that you’re seeing, that’s going to be a very visual experience as well.

So all of this is very deeply connected to loose parts.

IMAGINATIVE PLAY AND LOOSE PARTS

Now one more type of play I wanted to bring up and that is imaginative play. So this is where children start to go beyond the conventional rules of the world. And they start to think that I’m a tree, or they might think that they have wings and that they are a bee.

This is where it ties in that variable that I was talking about how your own ideas and thoughts can be a loose part. So that’s very much connected to imagine to play.

CONNECTING PLAY & LOOSE PARTS – FREEBIE DOWNLOAD!

Make sure you grab the download, and I have the 16 different types of play that you can read through and learn about.

You’ll find a reflection sheet so that you can go through and write down what different types of play you see happening and then make the connections to the different types of loose parts that they’re using in their play as well.

And then start to brainstorm how can you support that in your environments.

Make sure you share your ideas of how children are connecting loose parts and play into the Facebook group, All Things Early Years.

CURIOUS ABOUT ALL 16 TYPES OF PLAY?

The above mentioned freebie goes through all 16 types, but I also came across this video on Bob Hughes 16 Types of Play!.