Here at Willows Pre-School, we encourage our children to get creative and think outside of the box wherever possible. One fantastic way of encouraging this is through Loose Parts. Loose parts are any objects and materials that can be moved, manipulated, controlled, and changed while children play and create.
Loose parts can be used in an endless number of ways to create new objects, designs, pictures, and structures; the only limit is your own imagination! We provide the children with a range of different loose parts and some vague objectives when using loose parts, such as creating landmarks from around the world, faces or topic-related objectives etc. along with giving the children the creative freedom to create anything their imaginations desire! This week, the preschool children have been using loose parts in several ways.
They have been looking at the globe and spotting countries they are familiar with such as home countries or countries they have been to on holiday. From there, they were asked to create something they remember from that country; some creations included a boat they saw on the beach, the Eiffel Tower and Granny’s house! Other loose part activities have included building bridges and buildings in the garden and expressing our emotions through faces made with loose parts. Each week our children are provided with different types of loose parts and new objectives and creative freedom to translate their imaginations into something tangible.