Loose Parts Play: The Material List Is Already in Your Recycling Bin

The most-used toy in my yard for the better part of a decade was dirt.

Dirt, and a hose, and whatever else was lying around: rocks, sticks, acorns, a chipped bowl, the lids off things. The mud kitchen I’ve written about was really just a shelf where all of that collected, and it outlasted every wrapped present that came through the door in the same years, because a plastic toy does one thing and a rock does whatever a child needs it to do that afternoon. Educators have a name for the rock. They call it a loose part, and there’s a whole theory about why it beats the toy, and the theory is fifty years old and still right.

What is loose parts play?

Loose parts are open-ended materials with no fixed purpose that a child can move, combine, take apart, line up, carry, pour, stack and turn into something else: stones, shells, sticks, pinecones, wooden rings and blocks, fabric scraps, cardboard tubes, bottle caps, buttons, lengths of rope, tiles, corks, spools. Loose parts play is what happens when a child has a pile of that and nobody tells her what it’s for. A stick is a spoon, then a sword, then a fishing rod, then a fence post; a bowl of acorns is soup, then money, then a family. The material doesn’t decide. The child does, and that’s the whole point.

The phrase comes from a British architect named Simon Nicholson, who wrote a short, cranky essay in 1971 called “How NOT to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts.” His claim, in one sentence: in any environment, the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kinds of variables in it. A finished, fixed, beautifully designed playground with nothing to move offers a child almost no variables; a beach offers thousands. Nicholson thought we were cheating children by handing them finished things, and he thought we did it because adults like finished things and because finished things are what you can sell.

That covers what loose parts play is. The next question is why a bag of rocks does more for a kid than a shelf of toys, and I’ve watched the reason from two directions.

Why a rock beats the toy

A toy with a purpose ends. A child figures out what it does, does it, and is finished, and the toy’s whole value was spent in that first discovery. A loose part never gets finished, because the purpose lives in the child rather than in the object, and the child changes every day. That is the developmental argument in one paragraph, and there’s research that backs it from a different angle: a 2018 study out of the University of Toledo gave toddlers either four toys or sixteen, and the children with four played longer with each one and found more ways to play with it. Fewer, more open things produce deeper play. A pile of loose parts is the extreme version of “fewer, more open,” because every piece can be anything.

I’ve watched this from the classroom side too. Fifteen-year-olds handed an open-ended task, with no rubric and no model, would freeze, and I’ve written about that elsewhere. What I’ve come to think is that the freezing started young, in a childhood where every material came with its purpose attached: the toy that does one thing, the kit that makes one project, the worksheet with one right answer. A child who spends her first ten years with loose parts spends them deciding what things are for. A child who spends them with finished toys spends them finding out. Those are different kids by fifteen.

Where the blame goes

The toy aisle cannot sell you a rock, and that’s the systems layer. Loose parts are free or nearly free, they’re already in your house and your yard, and there’s no margin in them, so nobody with a marketing budget is going to tell you about them. What gets marketed is the finished thing: the branded, molded, licensed toy that does one thing loudly and “sells out,” and a parent who’s been told for years that a good parent buys the good toy has to actively unlearn that to leave a pile of pinecones on the table instead. I’ve written about the toy pile and who profits from it here. If you’re scrolling loose-parts inspiration and seeing beautifully organized trays of expensive pastel wooden pieces, that’s the toy aisle catching up: real loose parts are not a product category, and a preschool that spends its budget on them has missed Nicholson’s point.

The loose parts materials list, in prose

Since this is what most people typing “loose parts list” want, here’s what I’d gather, and where.

From outside: stones of different sizes, sticks, bark, pinecones, acorns, shells, seed pods, leaves, sand, dirt, water. This is the best list and it costs nothing; a walk with a bucket fills it.

From the kitchen and the recycling: cardboard tubes and boxes, lids and bottle caps (for kids past the mouthing stage), wooden spoons, muffin tins, small bowls and cups for sorting and pouring, corks, egg cartons, clothespins, a funnel, a colander.

From the craft or hardware drawer: buttons, spools, fabric scraps and ribbon, rope and string, wooden clothespins, curtain rings, tiles, large nuts and bolts, small offcuts of wood sanded smooth.

Bought, if you want a few: plain wooden blocks in mixed sizes, wooden rings and discs, glass gems or flat marbles, a set of small metal or wooden bowls. Plain, unpainted, no faces, no themes.

For toddlers, the rule is bigger than a mouth and nothing that shatters, and you sit nearby. For preschoolers, the whole list opens up. For older kids (and yes, a nine-year-old is still a loose parts kid), add real tools and materials with real stakes: wood, nails, wire, fabric, a saw with supervision. The material grows with them; the principle doesn’t change.

How to use loose parts (and how to wreck it)

Put them out and leave. That’s most of it. A basket of stones next to the blocks, a tray of shells on the table, a bin of tubes and lids on the floor, and then you do something else in another room. The wrecking happens when an adult stays and starts suggesting: “You could make a pattern!” “Let’s sort them by color!” “What could this be?” The moment you supply the purpose, the loose part becomes a toy with a purpose, and you’re back where you started. If a child stares at the pile and does nothing, let her stare. The nothing is where the idea comes from, and I’ve written about why here.

Expect mess. Expect the acorns to end up in the bathtub and the bottle caps in the soup. A house with loose parts in it is a house with stuff in odd places, and you can either fight that or decide it’s the price of a kid who can make something out of nothing, which is what you were hoping to raise in the first place.

One thing

This week, take a bucket on one walk and come home with it full. Put it on the floor without saying what it’s for, and leave the room.

I write every week about what childhood is for and how to protect it from the things built to fill it. You can find me on Instagram or join the list.

Sources

• Nicholson S, “How NOT to Cheat Children: The Theory of Loose Parts,” Landscape Architecture 62, 1971, pp. 30–34. Central statement: “In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kinds of variables in it.” Link
• Dauch C, Imwalle M, Ocasio B, Metz AE, “The influence of the number of toys in the environment on toddlers’ play,” Infant Behavior and Development 50, 2018, pp. 78–87. 36 toddlers; four-toy vs sixteen-toy conditions; fewer toys produced longer play with each and more varied play. Link