Loose Parts & Creativity
It was first proposed back in the 1970’s by architect Simon Nicholson, who believed that it is the loose parts in our environment that encourage our creativity. In Childcare, loose parts are materials that can be moved, carried, combined, redesigned, lined up, and taken apart and put back together in multiple ways.
After attending a ECW conference on the Sunshine Coast with work colleagues, Angus who runs an OSCH on the Northside off Brisbane, talked about loose parts within his service and through this vision I felt very inspired and started to envision my own thoughts of supplying large and small loose parts to enable the children to create.
Many children started the day just walking past the materials which were scattered within the yarning circle when one started to move the crates and stacked them one on top of each other. This caught the eye of another child who started to add smaller loose parts. As the structure was beginning to take shape more and more children kept adding other materials. Some of these materials consisted of metal bucket, wooden planks, tree cut-offs, wood off-cuts, crates and pipes.
When I acknowledged the children’s efforts one yelled out “yes this is our really big castle”, I said great and look at all the the materials used. Another child clapped their hands to encourage other children to join in and states “we are a Team, come and help”, I was sure to let the children know that it was great for them to work together. I was very pleased in the way that the loose parts were used, also the team work and collaboration between children. The children created many different structures.
In this time of excitement and inspiration I’m hoping to encourage others to offer same within their service as I feel the children will not only amaze you with their creativity but also their imagination. It’s wondrous to see the children’s leadership and their ideas come to fruition when they are given the space and materials they need to see their project through to completion. Materials can be found at the tip, charities, tradesman with off cuts and around the neighbourhood kerb collection. I hope this can inspire all educators do encourage children to continue to fill their world with raw material creations.
Maria – Springfield
