60 Jars of Loose Parts for Toddlers

As of April 26th, 2019, we have gathered 60 jars of loose parts. This is monumental for us as educators because this has been challenging. It has caused us to think and question the materials we are providing for our children. We wanted the materials to be thoughtful, safe and interesting for our very hard working toddlers. Toddlers are always moving and always thinking and so we as educators had to be always moving and always thinking about what else could we find. Our children deserve it.

The concept of teacher as researcher is an important element in our work to gather interesting and important Loose parts. We as educators decided that we wanted to investigate Loose parts for Toddlers. The first steps in this research project was the guiding questions for our work.

Our overall guiding research question is

Our project is made up in three parts:

Part One: Hunting and Gathering

Part Two: Invitations and Provocations

Part Three: Conclusions and Next Steps

Part One

Hunting and Gatheringfor the Loose parts has been interesting, thought provoking, challenging and uncomfortable.

The questions that I face everyday in this project are:

What will I find that has not already been discovered?

Could I be original? Could I be inventive?

How and where will I find these Loose parts?

Could I be a creative hunter?

Could I gather Loose parts from unique sources?

We have gathered 60 jars of interesting and important materials for our toddlers and we have 40 more to go which will be challenging. We as educators need to add complexity to our work and it should never be simplistic. We have now decided to divide the Loose parts into categories, which I hope will help in the final stages of our gathering.

The categories will include:

Metal

Fabrics

Wood

Nature Materials

Plastics

Part Two of this project will be Invitations and Provocations

How will the children use the Loose parts in their work and play?

Our intent will not only be to set up invitations- the beautiful part but to show you how the children play with the materials- the Messy part and the most important part.

We have all seen on Instagram and Facebook, the beautiful set-ups for the children but what do they with the materials. We will show you what our children do with the materials and how they use these materials to think and figure things out.

Part Three of this project will be the Conclusions and Next Steps: Coming Soon

Please follow us in this research project:

Heather Jackson, RECE

The Sunflower School

Orangeville, Ontario

www.thesunflowerschool.ca