Why I Love Loose Parts

This has been an interesting fall for me.   I am back in the classroom on a regular basis for the first time in many years.  Each Wednesday morning, I have the privilege of working with a group of kindergarten and grade 1 learners.

I can't really say whether or not they are a "typical" group, as it's been 15 years since I was last a kindergarten teacher.  I can say they are busy.  They're curious.  They're creative.  They're conversational.  And several of them are still learning the basics in terms of sharing their learning space with others and interacting successfully as part of a group.

I've struggled a bit to find a rhythm with them.  They've got too much energy to sit for stories and whole group lessons, they are all over the place in terms of their readiness for product-based tasks.  Solving a challenge that one is having inevitably leads to something that needs sorting with someone else.

I've been chatting with my teaching partner, who is with them for the other 90% of the week.  She has set up these wonderful morning choices for them, and she never seems to be as rattled as I'm feeling after a busy morning with our class.  She talked about provocations and seeing where their questions took them. 

I knew the feeling in the room during this choice time was lovely and productive, but didn't know that was rooted in Reggio Emilia philosophy until another teacher on our primary team came across the hall and began chatting about "Loose Parts."    She's working on her masters, and was doing a project on them.  I listened along, hearing all kinds of wonderful things about creativity, and interest, and engagement, and honoring children's passions. I admitted that I was new to this approach, but didn't confess that I had no idea, really, what a "loose part" or a "provocation" were. 

That weekend, I went home and did a whole bunch of reading.  I learned that provocations were clues alongside bits of materials or objects that are designed to inspire exploration.  Not "rules" or "systems,"  but something that can provide "an inspiration for children to express themselves." (From: What is a Provocation).  I love this idea.  We were expressing ourselves all over the classroom.  Might as well find a way to channel it for good...

I also read about how to set up a "Reggio-Inspired Activity."   From what I have gleaned through my reading, you begin first with the children.  Find out what they are interested in, what they have questions about.  Once you know that, you seek activities and materials that will "engage their sense of wonder."  How beautiful is that notion?  If we can do that, even a little bit, what a wonderful place our classrooms will be.  Kate Gribble's blog has really helped me think through this...you can find her at: An Everyday Story: Inquiry Based Learning. 

So I launched.  I was ready to start a new unit on light, so I hunted through my house for every flashlight and headlamp I could find.  We were making glow-in-the-dark slime at Scouts, so I grabbed the blue light I'd picked up for that, too. (Although it was really hot, shouldn't probably have been in a K/1 classroom...I'd skip it the next time around).  Then I went hunting for prisms and mirrors, and bits of colored plastic, and bins of "stuff" to shine lights on,  in an attempt to create some provocations. 
                                                     
I had already learned that this group works best with a tiny bit of structure, completely open-ended exploration puts us in proximity with children we don't do our best learning beside.  My solution was to structure the groups and station rotations, but not the exploration specifically.  I set up five stations with a variety of materials and let them rotate through a turn at each.  When we were done, we collected our questions.

We did a lot of thinking during our exploration.  Now my challenge was tweaking the provocations to allow us to explore our wonders.  I spent the better part of an afternoon looking for books at the public library on "light experiments," and googling for "reggio activites about light" and such.  I sorted and re-sorted my bins trying to come up with the best way to present things to answer their questions.

And then I gave up.  I had no idea how to set things up to match their questions.  These weren't my questions.  In the end, I decided to remind them of what their questions were, and to put the materials back out for them, to see what they came up with.  That was a fantastic decision on my part, if I may say so. 

During the exploration, I circulated and ask them about things.  ("Did you find your rainbow?"  "What happened when you stacked those colors together?").  We took a whole bunch of pictures, and put some drawings into our Wonder Books to record our thinking.

I am so proud of these kids.  We didn't all answer our original questions, but we sure learned a lot about light.  Ask us about reflection.  We can tell you that it can "bounce," or go in different directions.  We can tell you that it can change color if we put different, transparent, things between the light source and the place it's landing.

  We can tell you that light goes through some things but not through others, and that it looks different when it comes from a natural source versus a light in the classroom.

We can tell you that it sometimes gets hot, and
that we shouldn't put it right in our eyes or it hurts them. (But that that's better with a barrier like sunglasses).  We have made connections to summer days and solar eclipses.

I love this way of being with learners in the classroom.  It was a leap of faith based on a need to re-design my approach to meet the needs of some very busy little people, and it worked.  I'm always re-directing somebody when we're sitting at the carpet.   When we're exploring with loose parts, I get to talk about wonders and discoveries.  I pack my phone with me because we're so excited we need pictures about everything.  And when we go to put the pictures in our notebook a full week later, we can still describe what we were wondering about and what we figured out.

Thank you, Joanne and Aimee for letting me pretend I knew what you were talking about until I was able to figure out a little bit about it for myself.  It was either rattling out some Loose Parts within myself, or learning about Loose Parts with our learners.  I'm confident that I picked the right set.  I'm far from being an expert on the Reggio approach, but I'm hooked on learning more.  Meeting learners where they are at, and honoring their sense of wonder, is a lovely way to acknowledge that "They Are All Our Kids."