Increasing Focus Through Loose Parts (and Tires in the OC)

Teachers are always so eager to engage children and stimulate them with new learning opportunities. We offer activities that span all of the developmental areas, we diligently change out the toys on a weekly basis, and we spend hours planning for the next set of creative activities. Monday morning comes, and the room has been transformed with new offerings for the children to explore. Of course, a well-planned, intentional and creative teacher is a good thing. However, is there a point to which our good intentions of setting out endless amounts of "engaging" activities becomes too much? By offering new toys every week are we in fact limiting their creativity and causing children to flit from one activity to another without being able to engage and focus on one activity/object for extended periods?Are we preventing them from deeply understanding and developing complexity in their play? I am not opposed to change. I love to challenge the children with new activities and I believe children enjoy exploring new materials. They also gain new skills when they are exposed to new experiences. However, I also believe that maintaining a base of familiar experiences (such as blocks, ramps & pathways, and dramatic play) and providing open-ended loose parts is critical to promoting focus, attention, developed complex thinking strategies, imagination, and creativity.

The concept of "loose parts" is not new. Children have been collecting, sorting, manipulating, moving, toting, building, and creating with loose parts for generations. Remember back to your days of playing in the woods. I'm sure you can muster some fond memories of using logs, rocks, pinecones, and other natural objects to create forts, mud kitchens, magic wands, secret treasures and more. Throughout childhood, I'm sure we have all magically "transformed" even manmade items to suit our play. Milk jugs became space ships, paper towel rolls became swords, and brooms became horses.  Items such as these are considered "loose parts." Undefined loose parts can become any object that the child can dream or imagine because they have no definitive element. For example, a plastic pile of spaghetti almost always stays a plastic pile of spaghetti. But a pinecone can become spaghetti, a rocket ship, or a magical fairy-tale carriage.  The creativity of the young mind never ceases to amaze me! Providing loose parts on the playground (and in the classroom) is a way to stimulate creativity, promote discovery, and spark curiosity among children. Loose parts provide a valuable open-ended learning resource.

Our school has a bounty of old tires laying around the playground. The children have endless uses for the tires. To be honest, I found them rather unsightly when I first started working at the school. But perhaps that is because I didn't see that the tires were really boats, ships, construction holes, and crawling tubes!

I hope you enjoy seeing how our children transform these simple objects and work them into their play! As I've shown in some of the photos, when the tires are not used for play, the teachers use them for functional purposes!

This boy drives his truck through a construction blockade made of tires.

These tires divide the sports area from the bike path.

This tire holds the tarp AND the paint!

Tires are often used to hold down tarps. We also cover our tables and furniture with tarps at night. The tires hold the tarps for extra protection!

The children have filled these tires with sand. 

Our younger pod used the tires in an obstacle course.

The boys feel like they are doing army drills!

Cooking over the "tire" (heehee...pun intended!)

These tires have become an outdoor oven.

Tires make great planters!

The 3's teacher set up these tires by digging them into the sand. Each class has enjoyed this immensely! They have kept this structure in place for over a week!

Climbing over the tires provides great gross motor skills. Balance is key!

This 2 year old is singing "Row, Row, Row Your Boat"

A few of his friends joined in the fun to sing as they cruised down the "river."

I stole one tire to keep the hose in place.

PS - If you have spiders where you live, be sure to paint the inside of the tires white. Since spiders prefer dark spaces, the white color deters them from taking residence!

If You Build It, They Will Come

In my last post I talked about extending activities rather than "ditching" them when children appeared uninterested in an object or activity. So today, I decided to test out the theory again. This time it was our set of "tree blocks"in which I wanted to spark some interest.

I have put these blocks in our play yard several times for the children; and for several times, they weren't interested. At all. To be honest, I was shocked. I personally love the blocks! I mean, don't the children know that natural materials are all the rage? Don't they understand that playing with natural items will help them gain the much-needed and much-talked about connection with nature that the children of today so desperately need? I guess not. Let's face it...they are in it for the fun. It is the teachers who are in it for the philosophy. That said, it is up to us to "camouflage" the philosophy with "fun".

So, it was up to our storage room I went to find something interesting to add to the tree blocks. I walked into the "science room" and stumbled upon a bin of forest animals. These could definitely add some life to the blocks! This time, I put the blocks on our patio where our "older" pod (3-5yrs) can choose to play during their free choice time. Before the children arrived in the morning, I set up the table to look like a little forest with animals peering around corners and hiding under the blocks. As the children passed by on their way to class I could already hear them chatting to their parents about the forest table.

At first, only one child went to the table. It was a start. He asked me to play, so I sat with him and we enjoyed playing with the creatures and talking about the various types of animals on display. Slowly, several others joined the fun and soon I was able to back out and watch as their play unfolded.

They worked cooperatively for more than half an hour and created some very clever structures with the blocks. They called me over to see their creations. They were positively thrilled with themselves!

During the same play period, my coworker came over and commented on how his 3 year olds were not playing with the brand-new hollow blocks we just purchased. He is an extremely insightful teacher, so quoting Kevin Costner from Field of Dreams as he walked, he went over and built a great something...and the children came.

Ahhh, success!

These structures were made by the 3's class...after the teacher left!