Open Ended Play Ideas for Kids

Materials that can become anything, and why a box of loose parts outlasts most toys by years.

The principle

A toy that does one thing produces one game. A material that could be several things produces as many games as the child has ideas, which is a considerably larger number.

This is why the box a toy came in is so frequently more popular than the toy, and it is worth taking that observation seriously rather than treating it as a joke.

What to have

Containers. Boxes of every size, tubs, tins, baskets. Endlessly useful and free.

Fabric. Old sheets, scarves, towels, a length of anything. Becomes clothing, shelter, water, a river, a cape.

Structure. Cardboard, tubes, planks, crates, cushions, clothes horses. The raw material of dens.

Small things in quantity. Pebbles, buttons, shells, corks, bottle tops, pasta, pine cones. Quantity matters; a few of something is a set, a lot of something is a material.

Fasteners. Tape, string, pegs, elastic bands, treasury tags. The difference between arranging things and building them.

Natural materials. Sticks, leaves, stones, sand, water, mud. Free, varied, and better than most purchases.

Where the good ones come from

Not a shop. Recycling, hardware offcuts, charity shops, the garden, and things that were about to be thrown away. This is worth saying because the commercial versions of loose parts play are expensive and no better.

How to set it up

Accessible without asking. If a child has to request materials, the spontaneous play does not happen.

Sorted loosely, so they can find things, and not so precisely that using them feels like disturbing an arrangement.

Somewhere mess is allowed. The main constraint on this kind of play in most houses is not materials but permission.

Left up between sessions where possible. A construction that has to be dismantled each evening never becomes elaborate.

What to quietly retire

Toys that do one thing, particularly ones that make the noise for you. Anything where the child's role is to press. Sets with a single correct outcome, once they have been made once.

Rotate rather than remove, and put things away for a few months. A material that has been absent comes back interesting.

What not to do

Suggest what things could be. The moment an adult says the tube could be a telescope, it is a telescope, and the child has stopped inventing.

The whole value of open-ended material is that the idea has to come from them.