Loose Parts Learning
As part of the ongoing improvement to our primary school’s learning community, we have embarked on an exciting project that we will be developing this year called Loose Parts Play.
Staff will be encouraging children to use their imagination to play with different resources including tyres, wooden planks, plastic guttering and crates. These might seem unusual play items but the idea is that they can be used in many different ways, allowing the children to explore and be creative.
This will be a chance for the children to play freely with friends, investigate, discover, develop vocabulary, use lots of trial and error to learn for themselves, make their own judgements about adventurous play and recognise safe limits.
Loose Parts is based on outside learning, driving language acquisition and learning. It encourages rich learning opportunities through play and playful teaching. We all know how successfully children create their own learning opportunities when the use of their imagination and creativity are required. The Loose Parts programme is based on extensive research over the past few decades. 'Children find wonder in leaves, sticks, stones, rocks, feathers, cones etc'. The programme is extremely beneficial to younger children, many of whom may have delayed speech and lack resilience and social skills.
Over the coming months, staff at Mary Hare Primary will be exploring a variety of outdoor challenges through the Loose Parts programme.
We are really excited to develop this for the children at Mary Hare Primary and look forward to the adventures that lie ahead!