“...order, abundance, and variety of materials create fertile ground for making meaning out of the pieces and parts of our collective lives”

-Bringing Learning To Life



Thursday, April 20, 2017

UVM (Childrens Campus School "loose parts" workshop during leadership week)


"Loose parts" advocacy with UVM educators

What are loose parts?  Where did this theory come from? How do you collect, sort, organize, incorporate in environments, observe, assess, reflect?  What systems do you have to implement learning and play with "loose parts"?  How do you teach others the mess is the learning?  It's about the process and not the product.  Who is accountable?  How do you document and make visible the learning that is happening?  Is it a reciprocal process?  

             


Loose parts celebrate all learning styles and can influence ALL areas of learning.  They should inspire learning, wonder and curiosity, are gender neutral, and most often FREE.  Artistic creations with letters, smooth stones, recycled bottle caps, tile samples, wood parts, floor samples, window blind samples...
  
                                          






Ribbon offering a multitude of possibilities...weaving, measuring, sorting, sensory, texture differences.

    
                          


          Symmetry, balancing, magnetic; parts used to experiment with the properties of the "parts."  Teachers manipulating weight, size, textures.  Tinkering with interesting and quality materials sparking an inspiration to forge the way!