What’s in This Guide

  • What are Loose Parts?

  • Understanding why kids like playing with junk

  • The benefits of open-ended play

  • How to start your loose part collection

  • How to setup the environment for play

  • Immediately doable play ideas

  • The guide as a downloadable PDF

  • Next steps

Welcome Parents & Caregivers!

It’s your job, as the adult, to entertain, play with, and generally occupy children.

Parents and caregivers feel this responsibility deeply and take it seriously. We have been conditioned to believe this is a necessary role we must play. Plus, we want children to be happy. So, we eagerly signed on for the job as entertainment director. We all just want to be the best parents, caregivers, and educators we can be.

But, experts all agree that independent play is essential for growth and development, and it makes for happier kids and calmer parents. Children engaging in independent, self-directed play demonstrate measurable increases in:

  • overall mental health

  • attention

  • language and vocabulary development

  • creativity

  • autonomy

  • gross and fine motor skills

Great, you may be thinking. I would love for my children to play independently, but…they won’t. That’s because independent play is a skill that sometimes needs encouragement to fully develop. Kids may struggle with self-directed play because they haven’t had much opportunity to do it. Yet.

That’s why this mini-course was developed. 

We have the secret ingredient to independent play and it’s called “loose parts.”