Have you ever bought something new, only to find that the children are more interested in the box it came in?

To us, it might simply be a cardboard box. To a child it could be a car, a shop, a den, a spaceship, a stage, somewhere to hide or something completely different that we hadn’t even considered.

This is loose parts play.

What are loose parts?

Loose parts are everyday materials and objects that children can move, carry, combine, take apart, redesign and use in different ways within their play. Unlike many traditional toys and resources, they don’t have one fixed purpose or a “right” way to play with them.

Loose parts might include:

• cardboard boxes and tubes
• crates and containers
• fabric
• blankets
• old clothes
• pegs and rope
• buckets
• guttering
• pipes and hoops
• tyres
• planks and pieces of wood
• pots
• pans and kitchen utensils
• stones, sticks, leaves, shells, pinecones, mud, sand and water
• recycled and scrap materials

Theory of loose parts – Why are loose parts so valuable?

Simon Nicholson’s Loose Parts Theory (1971) suggests that the richness of an environment is determined by the number and variety of variables available for people to interact with. In play, “loose parts” are open-ended materials that children can move, combine, redesign, and repurpose in countless ways. Nicholson argued that these materials encourage creativity, problem-solving, imagination, and independent thinking because there is no single “right” way to use them. By offering children the freedom to explore and manipulate loose parts, play environments become more engaging, child-led, and responsive to individual interests and ideas.

Playing Loosely

The important part isn’t really what the object is. It is what the child can do with it. If you’re unsure what this looks like in practice, the Scrapstore PlayPods video is a brilliant example:

Rather than adults setting out a planned activity, children are given access to a range of scrap materials and the possibilities develop from there.

Loose parts are for all ages

We can sometimes associate loose parts with younger children, particularly when we picture boxes, fabric, mud and natural materials. But there isn’t an age when children suddenly stop benefiting from open-ended play. What changes is often how they use the resources.

A younger child might sit inside a cardboard box and pretend it is a car. Older children might join several boxes together to create a structure, develop rules around a game or completely dismantle them to use the cardboard for something else.

As children get older, loose parts can support, resilience, critical thinking, designing, collaboration, and experimentation. Imagine a group trying to build a den using crates, fabric, rope and pieces of wood. It keeps collapsing. They discuss what has gone wrong, test different ideas and adapt their design until it works.

Today’s den builders, tinkerers and creators are tomorrow’s engineers, designers and entrepreneurs. Loose parts give older children and young people the freedom to experiment, take risks, adapt and innovate. By exploring how things work and how they might be improved, they develop the curiosity, creativity, and critical-thinking skills needed in an ever-changing world.

These experiences are about much more than keeping children occupied. As children manipulate, test and transform loose parts, they develop a wide range of skills and capabilities while remaining fully immersed in play.

Why Loose Parts Matter

Loose parts play sits at the heart of Playwork Principles 1 and 2.

Playwork Principle 1 reminds us that all children and young people need to play. The impulse to play is innate, and play is fundamental to healthy development, wellbeing and community life. Loose parts support this natural drive by providing children with endless opportunities to explore, create, experiment and engage with the world around them in ways that are meaningful to them.

Playwork Principle 2 describes play as a process that is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated. Loose parts have no fixed purpose and no predetermined outcome. A cardboard box can become a spaceship, a castle, a racing car, a market stall or something completely different. Children decide what resources mean, how they are used and where their play will go next. They control both the content and intent of their play by following their own ideas, interests and instincts.

This directly supports Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), which recognises every child’s right to rest, leisure, play, recreation and participation in cultural life. Providing access to loose parts is one way of ensuring that children have genuine opportunities to exercise that right through rich, meaningful play experiences.

Loose parts also connect closely with Fraser Brown’s Theory of Compound Flexibility. Brown argues that children increasingly live in environments that are highly structured, timetabled and predictable. In contrast, loose parts create environments full of possibilities, uncertainty and change. A collection of crates, fabric, ropes and planks can become almost anything, and the play can evolve minute by minute according to children’s ideas.

This flexibility allows children to adapt, negotiate, solve problems, take appropriate risks and respond creatively to challenges. Whether building dens, inventing, developing games, or transforming everyday materials into something entirely new, children are developing resilience, confidence, independence, creativity, and critical thinking.

When we provide loose parts, we are doing far more than offering resources. We are protecting children’s right to play, supporting freely chosen and self-directed play, and creating environments where children can develop the skills, attitudes and imagination that help them thrive both now and in the future.

What should we provide?

There isn’t a perfect loose parts shopping list, and settings don’t need to fill a shed with hundreds of resources suddenly.

Start with what you have.

Look at your environment and ask yourself: How many of our resources can children actually use in different ways?

A mixture is useful. Consider large and small resources, natural and manufactured materials, things that can be transported, things that can be constructed with, materials that can cover or connect things and resources that offer different textures and sensory experiences.

You don’t necessarily need to buy them either. Families may have unwanted materials, local businesses may have safe offcuts or packaging, and charity shops, scrap stores and nature can all provide possibilities.

Children should also be involved. Watch what they already choose to play with and talk to them about what they would like available. The Playing Loose resource links this consultation to Article 12 of the UNCRC and children’s right to have their views considered in decisions that affect them.

Perceived Barriers

“But where are we going to put it all?”

Storage is probably one of the first practical barriers many settings will think of – particularly clubs operating from shared spaces where everything needs to disappear at the end of the session.

And that’s understandable.

Loose parts provision doesn’t mean keeping absolutely everything anyone offers you.

Start small. A few stackable boxes containing fabric, tubes, pegs, containers and other adaptable resources can offer an enormous number of possibilities.

“It just looks like rubbish!”

This can be another barrier. Parents, visitors and even other members of staff may wonder why children are playing with cardboard tubes, old tyres and fabric when the setting has “proper toys”.

The Playing Loose training resource itself recognises some of these barriers, including storage, getting hold of materials, mess, concerns about what parents might think and Playworkers feeling that play needs to have an outcome.

This is where we can advocate for play.

Loose parts can be messy.

Children will move things. We should ask whether our desire for a tidy environment is unintentionally restricting children’s play.

Sometimes a play environment looks played in because children have been playing in it.

Conclusion

Think possibilities, not activities.

Loose parts can also challenge the way we think about planning.

As Playworkers, we don’t always need to decide what children will create before we provide the resources. Instead of planning activities, we can create possibilities.

Rather than asking:

“What activity are we providing today?”

We might ask:

“What opportunities are we creating for children to explore, imagine and play?”

Because sometimes the most valuable resource in the room isn’t the expensive new toy.

It really is the box it came in.

Useful links:

• https://www.playscotland.org/wp-content/uploads/1-Loose-Parts-Play.pdf
• https://play.wales/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/loose-parts-toolkit.pdf