This story is a clever adaptation of the old folk song Old McDonald had a farm where it gets revved up by Steve Goetz (Author), Eda Kaban (Illustrator). Vehicle enthusiasts will see and sing about beloved machines—the excavator, dump truck, bulldozer, trucks, and more!
Since it has become an all time favorite, we grabbed our vehicles + farm figurines, headed to our dig pit to recreate the story. Our outdoor dig pit always has gravel, construction toys, way to play roads, and large loose parts (cones, ramps, pvc pipes, crates, gutters, wheels). An area that is often overlooked within outdoor play is integrating loose parts within the space. If you think about it, loose parts play essentially has always been an integral part of outdoor play since nature (rocks, pine cones, sticks, flowers, logs, etc.) provides so many open ended materials.
Open-ended materials on the playground such as gutters, pool noodles, cans, bottles, tires, crates, boxes, buckets, cones, pipes, and more provide children with never ending ways to transform things into whatever they can imagine. They allow the freedom to be messy, make noise, move, tote and construct. When loose parts are added, children can create or change a structure to manipulate it in order to meet their play needs. Complexity holds children’s interest and adds to their development as well as their enjoyment. Therefore outdoor loose parts serve as springboards for play and provide essential elements for intense, child-centered play.
There is endless imaginative play that occurs with outdoor loose parts. When children are role playing by creating a car to drive, building skyscraper cities, construction sites, farms, they are acting out various experiences they may have had or something that is of some interest to them. They are experimenting with decision making on how to behave and are also practicing their social skills. Children learn from experience: from what happens around them, from what they see, hear, smell, taste and touch. To absorb those experiences and make sense of the world, they need to be engaged in play. The small worlds, cars, robots, ramps, animals, spaceships created with loose parts provide limitless imaginative play while building their brains.
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