Loose Parts in
Environmental Education: Rethinking Nicholson’s Intent
For a recent workshop, I shared 10 principles on applying Nicholson's intent of the theory of loose parts in our play and learning spaces. A podcast episode on Loose Parts Nature Play will be ready soon!
All quotes are from Nicholson's original work. Read it here.
1. Limit the restrictions—how can we have a “yes” mentality in outdoor
learning?
"Young children (often) find
the world incredibly restricted--a world where they cannot play with building
and making things, or play with fluids, water, fire or living objects, and all
the things that satisfy one's curiosity and give us the pleasure that results
from discovery and invention."
2. Involve children in using, planning, and building of our spaces and
learning.
“Most
environments that do not work such as schools, playgrounds, day-care centers,
and museums, do not do so because they do not meet the “loose parts”
requirement. . . . The adults (artists, landscape architects, planners) have
had all the fun play with their own materials, concepts and
planning-alternatives, and then the builders have had all the fun building the
environments out of real materials; and thus has all the fun and creativity
been stolen.”
3. Blur lines between inside and outside.
"By
allowing learning to take place outdoors, and fun and games to occur indoors,
the distinction between education and recreation began to disappear."
4. Create a lab-like environment.
"Children learn most readily and easily in a laboratory
type environment where they can experiment, enjoy and find out things for
themselves."
5. Solve real life environmental
problems.
“Environmental education means the total
study of the ecosystem, i.e.: man, his institutions, and his structural,
chemical, etc., additions, included. The subject of human ecology, our values
and concepts, the environmental alternatives and choices open to us, in the
fullest sense, has recently become a dominant factor in some education
programs. In the simplest possible terms, the most interesting and vital loose
parts are those that we have around us every day in the wilderness, the
countryside, the city, and the ghetto.”
“Children
greatly enjoy playing a part in the design process. This includes the study of
the nature of the problem; thinking about their requirements and needs;
considering planning alternatives; measuring, drawing, model-making and
mathematics; construction and building; experiment, evaluation, modification
and destruction.”
6. Allow children to be part of
their learning process through experimentation.
"The study of children and cave-type environments only
becomes meaningful when we consider children not only being in a given cave but
also when children have the opportunity to play with space-forming materials in
order that they may invent, construct, evaluate and modify their own caves.
When this happens we have a perfect example of variables and loose parts in
action."
7. Use a variety of approaches
to loose parts play!
“All children love to interact with
variables such as materials and shapes; smells and other physical phenomena,
such as electricity, magnetism and gravity; media such as gases and fluids;
sounds, music and motion; chemical interactions, cooking and fire; and other
people, and animals, plants, words, concepts and ideas. With all these things
all children love to play, experiment, discover and invent and have fun. All
these things have one thing in common, which is variables or 'loose
parts'."
8. Just add water.
"Loose parts at work--water, ripples, reflections,
slush, floating and living objects. Many curriculum units are based on
experiments with water; here is the quickest, cheapest way to introduce
variables into an asphalt/chain-link environment."
"Human interaction and
involvement with water--its refraction, beading, noise. Liquids, gases
(waterfall, wind tunnel) afford classic examples of how loose parts permit
experimentation, creativity."
9. Use what we have naturally.
"The most interesting and vital loose parts are those
that we have around us every day in the wilderness, the countryside, the city
and the ghetto."
10. Play! However, play is not the only
verb Nicholson used. What actions happen in your program?
VERBS:
build, construct, play, experiment, invent, explore, discover, evaluate,
modify, study, think, consider, measure, draw, model-making, calculate,
destruct, slide, fold, hide, paint, bounce
"In
early childhood there is no important difference between play and work, art and
science, recreation and education-the either/or classification normally applied
by adults to a child's environment."
Please share how you have implemented these principles! I look forward to how you use them.