There is no right way to use this. I just talk about how the only rule is we’re not going anything down, so nothing is going to be permanent.
~ Zeba McGibbon from Episode 79 of The Kindergarten Cafe Podcast
Episode Summary
In this episode, I share how my classroom play center, Loose Parts, is sparking creativity and self-expression in young learners. Using everyday items like those from my recycling bin, there is so much power in open-ended materials in imaginative play. I also discuss simple organization strategies and how introducing materials gradually helps kids stay engaged. Through play, students develop storytelling skills, explore math concepts, and learn that the process matters more than the final product.
In this episode I share:
- Exploring Loose Parts in the Classroom
- Connecting Loose Parts to Literacy
- Benefits and Implementation of Loose Parts
Related Episodes:
- Balancing Curriculum and Play in Your Kindergarten Schedule ~ Ep. 48
- Encouraging Independent Play in the Classroom ~ Ep. 72
- Child-Led Play and Learning with Melysa from PRE-K Spot Talks ~ Ep. 27
Learn More:
- Workshop: Play-Based Learning in Kindergarten
- Top Five Play Based Learning Must Haves
- Starting Purposeful Play in Kindergarten? Outstanding!
- Setting Up Classroom Play Areas
Connect with Zeba:
- Instagram – @kindergartencafe
- Facebook – @kindergartencafe
- Website – www.kindergartencafe.org
- Tik Tok – @kindergartencafe
Read the Transcript
[0:00] Hey, teacher friends, it’s Zeba from Kindergarten Cafe, and I’m mostly done with our Literacy Miniseries, but this episode kind of relates. So stay with me. You’ll see how it relates. But I want to tell you about one of my newest favorite play centers and how I use it in the classroom. Let’s get started.
[0:19] Music. You’re listening to the Kindergarten Cafe podcast, where kindergarten teachers come to learn classroom-tested tips and tricks and teaching ideas they can use in their classroom right away. I’m Zeba, creator and founder of Kindergarten Cafe, and I help kindergarten teachers with everything they need from arrival to dismissal in order to save time, work smarter, not harder, and support students with engaging and purposeful lessons. I’m here to cheer you on through your successes and breakthroughs, and offer support and resources so you never have to feel stuck or alone. Ready to start saving time and reducing your stress all while using effective and purposeful lessons that students love? Let’s get started. Music.
[1:13] So my newest favorite play center that I’m so excited about is called Loose Parts. Have you heard of this? Have you used it? Let me know. Loose parts are open-ended materials that the kids can manipulate, move, and design with in a variety of ways. There are no directions for how to use the materials. We want kids to think creatively about it. we want to be clear that it’s the material should be used flexibly so they can be moved and reused and changed up. But the only I guess there’s one rule. I said there’s no rules, but there’s one rule. We’re not gluing these down. We’re not taping them down. We’re not making it permanent.
[1:58] So the idea is that the kids create something and they can change and adapt it and switch it up and fix it and tell a story and then they can put the materials back. So they are open-ended objects that the kids are designing with. Where do we get these loose parts from? You actually don’t need to spend like any money. Just look in your recycling bin. I’ve used marker caps, bottle tops. I asked the kids at lunch just to like stop throwing away the bottle tops to their like yogurt squeezable things and just hand them to me. Cardboard tubes, buttons, Q-tips, ribbon strips, you can even go into nature and collect like twigs rocks leaves i don’t know what leaves but you well you could use leaves like which is not they wouldn’t last forever flowers you could use temporarily pine cones acorns you could ask families or students to contribute materials like making a list of things you’re looking for like those yogurt you know container lids the squeezable pouches container lids things like that beads leads. Pebbles. I was in a beach that had like the most beautiful pebbles and I just collected literally like hundreds of them. You could do stuff like that. So you really don’t need to spend any money. I really have found all of my objects. I haven’t bought a single one.
[3:17] Try to find things that are different colors, different sizes, things like that. Now how do I organize these loose parts? I like to organize them in plastic mason jars. I just think it looks nice. It’s organized nicely. Any kind of Tupperware, recycled containers, bags, things like that works fine. I just like the look of the plastic mason jars. So when we put these out for students to just create with, we want to make sure that they are not making a mess with them. So it really helps to put out a flat a felt mat or a piece of like felt paper or like a foam board so that they can have that as their work area so it’s sort of contained their work is contained in that area or like a placemat that way they don’t go off beyond that into someone else’s space but I like the felt in particular because it kind of grounds the material so it doesn’t roll away.
[4:14] And I only put out a couple of items at a time. I don’t bring out, I actually did this, I learned the hard way. I brought out all my loose parts because I was so excited and I made a giant, giant mess. So pick two or three at a time and I take the mason jars and I dump them into this like sorter. How would I describe this? It’s like something you’d use like for math, like for sorting it’s like a big big plate like when you’re at a party and you put all these things that you would dip into the hummus right so you have a section for the carrots and a section for the celery and the broccoli like you have you know what i’m talking about okay so i put the materials into that kind of thing if you don’t have that you could just put it onto a little tray, or keep them in the mason jars that works too but i only put out a couple at a time and i rotate the materials, I don’t put out the same materials each time. So I keep it interesting and engaging. And I think about the prompt that I’m giving them or what I’m challenging them to do and relate that to the objects that I’m picking out. So if I’m encouraging them to make snowflakes, I’m not choosing a lot of colors, right? I’m choosing like the white Q-tips that I have and the white tubes that I have that I’ve found.
[5:31] Oh, you know where another great place to look for materials is, is our science department. If you have a science department, had so many random materials that they weren’t using anymore for older grades, like for experiments and activities. And they just let us go like shopping in the science department. It was so great. Anyway, side note. So when I introduce this to the kids, I pick two or three objects. Like that’s it. Even just two is good. And then I let them just explore with the materials. Like I don’t give any kind of prompts.
[6:04] And what I think is really sad, but like the kids would be like, what are we supposed to do? Like they’re looking for like, what is the right way to use this? So I make clear to them that there is no right way to use this. I just talk about how the only rule is we’re not going anything down. So nothing is going to be permanently left. Our creation is not going to be something that we take home or that we get to keep forever. we’re going to make it. We can take a picture of it and send it on Seesaw, but then we’re going to be all done with it. And you can change it and fix it and edit it and make it better. But then when you’re done, we’re going to put all the materials back. And so whatever you take out, you have to put back in the container that I came from. That’s it. That’s all the rules that I give. After I’ve let the kids really explore with these materials a couple of times, I will give prompts or challenges.
[6:58] And I try to connect those challenges or prompts to something that we’re learning about. So I might say like, we learned a lot about like trees. So it’s like create a tree or, you know, create an animal in winter or what does spring make you think about? Like things like that. And if the kids do my challenge, great. It’s really cool to see them using what we’ve talked about and what they’ve learned about in ways that putting it together into a creative focus like that and they can really talk about their creation and use the vocabulary that you’ve taught them. It’s really cool to see. But if they don’t, I don’t get upset. I want this to be a creative outlet for them. And so I’ll ask questions, be a guide, be a facilitator and a guide, ask open-ended questions, encourage them to talk to me about it, tell me about what you made, why did you choose that material.
[7:56] Like just letting them explain their thinking and their creative process.
[8:00] And this is where it’s a really great connection to literacy. So I said this episode had a connection to literacy. First of all, explaining their creation is really great oral language development. But also you could provide a prompt to retell a story. Or sometimes I’ll just put out the book as a prompt and see where they take it. And a lot of times they’ll do like a character or setting from the book. But it’s a really good way to connect to the book that they’re learning about or the book that you’ve been reading, the knowledge building, comprehension, all that stuff. And you also can prompt them to be like, tell a story about something you did over the weekend or tell a story about your family and they can create with their objects, their family and they can explain their family. And that’s a great connection to writing because then you can have them go off and do writing where they’re writing about their family.
[8:58] And so for kids that aren’t quite ready for that writing, having them do loose parts and telling their story is a great way to get them launched into that writing process. So it absolutely connects to literacy, but it is a play-based center that I’m very excited about. And as you’ve heard me talk about before, there’s so many academic benefits to these play centers. There are math benefits as well. Like you can connect to accounting collections. You can actually overlap the materials and use them for both. But asking kids to like count what they’ve created, they can sort the objects. You can definitely connect to shapes, talking about shapes and patterns, design, stuff like that. The other literacy connection you can do is you can have them building letters. Like you can put out a letter outline and have them build that letter with the objects, sight words, their names, their friends’ names. But I really like the storytelling aspect of retelling a story or telling their own story with the loose parts, especially because they can take apart and redesign and all that stuff with the loose parts because it’s not glued down. It’s a really cool opportunity to edit and change their story as it goes along.
[10:13] You can also connect to science or social studies by giving those prompts that relate to things you’ve been learning about, like design your family or design your community, make a plant, make a snowflake, stuff like that.
[10:28] So there’s a ton of benefits to using loose parts. I think when teachers think about it, it could be overwhelming at first to set up. But really, you’re just finding objects around your room, around your everyday life, outside. And so it takes a little time to gather it but then you’re putting it out a couple at a time and letting the kids explore and create and letting them take the lead. You can offer prompts and guides and suggestions but really it should come from them and I really hope you give it a try, and tag me on Instagram or send me an email to let me know how it goes because it is one of the coolest new play centers that I have introduced in my classroom. I don’t have it out every time because I don’t want the kids to have free access to the loose parts materials. I did that one year and they started taking it out whenever they wanted, which was great. But then I noticed they started taking out a ton at a time and making a big, big, big mess. And then some of those objects went missing, or were getting used in more permanent ways. So, I like to have a little bit more control over the center, which is why I don’t put it out every time.
[11:43] But I would put it out frequently, especially when I have a prompt idea or when I have a little more. I put it out when I have more extended time for the kids. When it’s a very quick playtime, I want to make sure to honor their creativity process. And so I don’t want to rush them. So I don’t put it out unless we have a longer playtime option, if that makes sense.
[12:05] So yeah so let me know how it goes with using loose parts i can’t wait to hear about it so quote of the day is one of my favorite quotes ever and i just overheard these two boys during playtime i don’t remember what they were playing with they were not playing with anything related to what they were about to talk about but um the one boy just turns to the other boy and just goes so tell me what you think about symbiotic relationships in kindergarten oh my gosh it cracks me up still to this day yeah what do you think about symbiotic relationships, so this is what play can do it can open up conversations to things with kids that you wouldn’t have even thought possible anyway i hope you enjoyed the episode and we’ll see you in the next one with our special guests talking all about science of reading.
[12:55] Music.
[13:01] Thanks so much for listening to the kindergarten cafe podcast be sure to check out the show notes for more information and resources or just head straight to kindergartencafe.org for all the goodies if you liked this episode the best ways to show your support are to subscribe leave a review or send it to a friend i’ll be back next week with even more kindergarten tips see you then, Thank you.