Famous Olympian Michael Phelps said 'When you use your imagination anything can happen.' Studies have shown that when a person can clearly imagine themselves doing a task, such as throwing a ball into a hoop, they can trick their brain into thinking they can confidently carry out the task. When it is their turn to physically throw the ball into the hoop they have the confidence in themselves that it will go well because they have used their imagination to visualise all the steps they need to take to get the ball into the hoop successfully. Using your imagination is a skill that we have to build and practice, but the more you exercise this skill the more it becomes second nature to use is, just like learning how to walk. The best way to practice this skills is providing children with open-ended materials, flexible play invitations and spaces where their creativity can be fostered and their ideas are listened to and respected.
One way to encourage children to use their imagination is to introduce loose parts into their play. Loose parts are open-ended, multi-functional objects that can be adapted for play in many different ways to create infinite possibilities, such as representing characters or objects. They can be manipulated by stacking, sorting, bending, matching and taking them apart to suit the needs of the child in that moment. Loose parts can be specific items that you can purchase. Or items that you can find in your recycling bin and outdoors, such as, clean bottle tops, empty boxes, sticks, stones, kitchen rolls tubes and ice cream sticks.
By adding loose parts into your child's playroom/classroom you can extend the possibilities for the toys you already have. Open-ended materials open new dimensions for children by opening a space where they can use their imagination to insert them into their already existing idea of their toys and how to use them. Loose parts can also grow with your child and can be adapted to their ever-changing likes and interests as there is always more than one way that you can use them.
Remember when you're setting up tuff trays for children they don't have to look perfect or be perfectly organised, you can simply put the toys and materials on the tray and let the children decided how to set it up and where to put them. By giving the children the freedom and space to decide where, how and what their play will look like they are problem solving, decision making, using their higher order thinking skills such as predicting and assessing while also promoting their self-esteem and confidence that their ideas are worth trying and listening to.
Why not make a game of trying to collect and find items around your home that you can use as loose parts? Grab a magnifying glass and some coloured bowls and make a loose part treasure hunt. Everyone chooses a coloured bowl and has to try and find items of that colour to collect and bring back to your tuff tray/container/table. Continue this until you have enough items or everyone had a turn. Have a look at all the items you collected from around your area and decided how you can play with them. Can you add them to water with some water tools? Do you need some building blocks to create structures? Do you need some large shapes to match to the items? The possibilities are endless.
Add the following to a tuff tray/ table:
Add the following to a tuff tray/container with sides:
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