A great game to play with children with loose parts is sorting and grading which teaches them important early numeracy (maths) skills. It also helps them to put into words what they are thinking as they have to describe why they are categorising the parts in a certain way.
Kate and Lynda played a timed game of sorting and grading with the loose parts at kinder one day. There were little branches, spools, pieces of wood, corks, shells etc and we sorted them into categories first like - long, short, round and then we graded the loose parts within the categories from smallest to largest or because of commonalities.
There is no right or wrong with grading. Kate showed this by putting the spools and the cubes in the same category as "they both had holes in them"! This made perfect sense even though it was not the "usual" or "expected" way of sorting round shapes separate to square shapes. This kind of divergent thinking can often be seen in very young children too.
You can use sorting and grading to encourage children to help pack up loose parts too.
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