Loose Parts: An Open-ended and Creative Experience
Loose parts are essentially any type of objects that can be moved around, built with, organized, sorted, lined up, designed, or otherwise creatively manipulated. Believe it or not you almost certainly have things in your home that will make an excellent collection.
It’s helpful to organize them in some way. You might consider putting each type of material into its own container or you might have something like a baking pan with multiple sections that will sort all the materials in one space.
Natural materials are an excellent source of inspiration. I have a gazillion acorns in my lawn, so I collected some of those. You might have a source for rocks (marble-sized to softball-sized is a decent starting point, uniform or mixed), seashells, sticks, or anything that can be manipulated on a table or spot on the floor.
I found some bags of nails in the garage so I collected a few types of them. My favorite was nice and shiny, but also a little too pointy, so I used some others that were less pokey than a sharpened pencil. Safety first! I had some plastic eggs, so I added those, and I cut up some cardboard into smallish “plates.” After that, I put them all into the baking tray so that all the different materials were distinguishable.
There were also various containers for sorting and combining.
At this point, let the creativity flow. Is this a collection that wants to be organized in some way? Can you make interesting structures, or maybe some patterns or designs? After looking at what I had for a few minutes, I decided to make some designs.
You can also build with the materials. Wyn wanted to get in on some of that, so he helped out too.
Here’s a few other things that could be used:
Marbles
Beads
Bottlecaps
Squares of fabric
Ribbon
Popsicle sticks
Dice
And the list goes on…
Colored paper
Golf tees
Old credit or business cards
Coins
Clothespins
Leaves
Flowers
