Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/wonder/5025640/
*See pdf version of this article for tables and photos.
Set Your Imagination Loose with Large Loose Parts!
Before reading on, gather up some boards, boxes, sofa cushions, sticks or blankets and build yourself a cozy reading den…
“The theory of loose parts says, quite simply, the following: ‘In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity, and the possibility of discovery, are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it.’”
– Simon Nicholson, 1971
Finding some irony in Nicholson’s use of the phrase, ‘quite simply,’ I was delighted to come across this simply evocative description of loose parts from Libby Pearce and Emma Foy, Directors of The Treehouse Nature Nurseries in Yorkshire, England
(www.thetreehouseyorkshire.co.uk):
You know when you spend all that money on kids’ toys at Christmas time and they end up sitting playing with the wrapping paper or the cardboard box they came in? Loose parts.
Remember those childhood memories building dens in the woods with sticks or forts at home with the bed sheets? Loose parts.
Did you ever make potions or perfumes with ...