LibGuides: Early Childhood Education Resources: Play

Creating Play Spaces on a Budget

Repurposing Creative Finds for Creative Minds: Thinking Outside the Box (Bresson, 2017)
This article suggests repurposing found items -- like cardboard boxes, bottle caps, hardware store samples, and small pieces of furniture -- to facilitate play.
How to Find the Best Bargain Preschool Teacher Supplies (Hier, n.d.)
This blogger recommends recycled art supply shops, thrift shops, garage sales, dollar stores, and more for classroom supplies on a budget.

Organizing a Play-Based Learning Environment

The Indoor Environment: Designing and Organizing (Virtual Lab School, n.d.)
"As teachers, it is our job to make sure the classroom is thoughtfully designed and materials for play are well organized. This [professional development lesson for early childhood teachers] highlights how to design your room for group activities, privacy, storage, and display, with attention to all learners. It introduces design elements that promote a sense of comfort and invite exploration and engagement. This lesson also examines how to organize materials for independence, easy use, and learning."
The Environment: Materials (Virtual Lab School, n.d.)
"There are countless toys and materials available for preschool classrooms. While it can be difficult to decide what to include in your space, this [professional development lesson for early childhood teachers] will help you ensure that a variety of developmentally appropriate materials are available. You will read about how to choose materials based on cultural relevance, children’s interests, and learning goals."

Play-Based Learning Activities

Let's Play: (Un)Curriculum Early Learning Adventures (Johnson & Dinger, 2014)
Let’s Play is a handbook full of child-led, open-ended learning adventures. The 39 fresh, fun, and budget-friendly activities (plus more than 225 play variations) are packed with learning that helps children develop important motor, cognitive, language, and social skills.
Young Architects at Play: STEM Activities for Young Children (Gadzikowski & Raedó, 2022)
When children build with blocks, they are both literally and figuratively constructing their knowledge of the world. When we see children's construction play through the lens of architecture, we are able to support and extend children's learning on all four STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering, and math. Young Architects at Play is a guide for both teachers and parents and includes a diverse variety of activities and resources. More than 20 projects involve both traditional classroom materials like unit blocks as well as natural materials, found objects, cardboard, and authentic woodworking materials.

Loose Parts

According to Daly, Beloglovsky, & Daly (2014):

In early childhood education (ECE) settings, loose parts mean alluring, beautiful found objects and materials that children can move, manipulate, control and change while they play (Oxfordshire Play Association, accessed 2014). Children can carry, combine, redesign, line up, take apart, and put loose parts together in almost endless ways. The materials come with no specific set of directions, and they can be used alone or combined with other materials (Hewes 2006). Children can turn them into whatever they desire: a stone can become a character in a story; an acorn can become an ingredient in an imaginary soup. These objects invite conversations and interactions, and they encourage collaboration and cooperation. Put another way, loose parts promote social competence because they support creativity and innovation. All of these are highly valued skills in adult life today.

The authors also emphasize that loose parts are "sustainable and economically feasible" because they can "often be had for free". The books below explore how loose parts can be used in the classroom and at home.

Loose Parts: Inspiring Play in Young Children (Daly, Beloglovsky, & Daly, 2014)
Use loose parts to spark children's creativity and innovation Loose parts are natural or synthetic found, bought, or upcycled materials that children can move, manipulate, control, and change within their play. Alluring and captivating, they capture children's curiosity, give free reign to their imagination, and motivate learning. The hundreds of inspiring photographs showcase an array of loose parts in real early childhood settings. And the overviews of concepts children can learn when using loose parts provide the foundation for incorporating loose parts into your teaching to enhance play and empower children. The possibilities are truly endless.
Loose Parts 2: Inspiring Play with Infants and Toddlers (Beloglovsky, Daly, & Gonzalez-Mena, 2016)
Loose parts capture children's curiosity, give free reign to their imagination, and encourage creativity. This form of play allows infants to be in control and recognize the power of their bodies and actions. A variety of new and innovative loose parts ideas are paired with beautiful photography to inspire safe loose parts play in your infant and toddler environments.
Loose Parts 3: Inspiring Culturally Sustainable Environments (Beloglovsky & Daly, 2018)
Loose parts cross the boundaries of gender, age, abilities, and socioeconomic challenges. This book helps teachers make a conscious effort to create culturally sustainable environments that allow children to grow and to conquer a dynamic world.
Loose Parts 4: Inspiring 21st-Century Learning (Daly & Beloglovsky, 2020)
In the newest installment of the wildly popular, award-winning Loose Parts series, Lisa Daly and Miriam Beloglovsky focus on including families and competency building. With inspiring full-color photographs Loose Parts 4 is organized around competencies and life skills children need for success in the future: knowingness, engagement, risk, connections, leadership, innovative thinking, and creativity. Lisa and Miriam explain the value of loose parts, detail how to integrate loose parts into the environment and children’s play, and specifically focus on loose parts for children in family environments—helping educators engage families and extend learning beyond the classroom.
Loose Parts for Children with Diverse Abilities (Beloglovsky, 2022)
Play is a magnificent activity that sustains life and promotes joy and hopefulness. Loose Parts for Children with Diverse Abilities addresses the importance of play while providing appropriate accommodation to support young children with diverse abilities.

Additional Research on and Strategies for Implementing Play-Based Learning

Preschoolers at Play: Choosing the Right Stuff for Learning and Development (Bresson & King, 2022)
"Early childhood educators have the opportunity to deeply and meaningfully scaffold children’s learning by curating and organizing the “stuff” children love to play with most. With this book, discover ideas for both familiar and new play materials and how those materials support the cognitive, social and emotional, and physical learning and development of children ages 3 to 5."
Planning for Play: Strategies for Guiding Preschool Learning (Kemple, 2017)
Planning for Play helps educators understand the different types of play and the rich opportunities offered through carefully planned time and environments designed for valuable pre-K play experiences.
Let Them Play: An Early Learning (Un)Curriculum (Dinger & Johnson, 2013)
Playtime is focused, purposeful, and full of learning. As they play, children master motor development, learn language and social skills, think creatively, and make cognitive leaps. This (un)curriculum is all about fostering children's play, trusting children as capable and engaged learners, and leaving behind boxed curriculums and prescribed activities. Filled with information on the guiding principles that make up an (un)curriculum, learning experience ideas, and suggestions for building strong emotional and engaging physical environments, Let Them Play provides support to those who believe in the learning power of play.
Serious Fun: How Guided Play Extends Children's Learning (Masterson & Bohart, 2019)
"A guide for teachers about the importance of planning learning experiences that integrate child-centered play with rich content-based instruction. Serious Fun emphasizes a teachers’ active role in children’s play in order to guide learning."
This is Play: Environments and Interactions that Engage Infants and Toddlers (Luckenbill, Subramaniam, & Thompson, 2020)
"Connecting theory to practice, this book highlights the importance of play for the social, emotional, and intellectual development of very young children."
Infants and Toddlers at Play: Choosing the Right Stuff for Learning and Development (McMullen & Brody, 2023)
"With this book, discover ideas for both familiar and new play materials and how those materials support the cognitive, social and emotional, and physical learning and development of children from birth to age 3."
Towards a Pedagogy of Play (Pedagogy of Play Research Team, 2016)
"The purpose of this paper is to share ideas that are emerging from a recent research initiative called a Pedagogy of Play that explores how playful learning can assume a central role in school."
Pedagogy of Play Blog
This is the official blog of the Pedagogy of Play research project, a collaboration between the LEGO Foundation and Harvard Graduate School of Education thinking about learning through play.
A Model for Assessment in Play-Based Kindergarten Education (Pyle, DeLuca, Danniels, & Wickstrom, 2020)
"Kindergarten teachers face the challenge of integrating contemporary assessment practices with play-based pedagogy. The current study addresses this challenge by presenting a kindergarten assessment framework rooted in theory and current classroom practices, based on teacher interview and observational data collected in 20 kindergarten classrooms."
Life of a Wildflower: Reimagining Meaningful Learning through Play-Based Pedagogy (Nontell, 2021)
"The author explores tensions between teacher-centered styles of teaching and play-based approaches that invite students to be creators of their own learning. Through narrative inquiry, the author uses a metaphor of wildflowers growing in natural environments to explore a child-led process of learning through play that fosters creativity and deep thinking."
Invitations to Play: Using Play to Build Literacy Skills in Young Learners (Burke, 2019)
"This comprehensive resource sets the stage for play-based learning that will help children build a strong literacy foundation, as well as successfully negotiate the choices they make in real life."
A Continuum of Play-Based Learning: The Role of the Teacher in Play-Based Pedagogy and the Fear of Hijacking Play (Pyle & Danniels, 2016)
This article describes a continuum of play-based learning to define the concept and help teachers implement this pedagogical approach.
Relational play-based pedagogy: theorising a core practice in early childhood education (Hedges & Cooper, 2016)
"We offer new conceptualising of teaching in highlighting the need to position a sophisticated blending of play, learning and teaching within participatory and relational pedagogies as a core practice of early childhood education. Further, we argue that two constructs – everyday and scientific concepts, and the zone of proximal development – position theoretically ways in which teachers’ knowledge, expertise and engagement might contribute to these ‘in the moment’ rich, thoughtful understandings of what we term relational play-based pedagogy."
Play-Based Learning: Evidence-Based Research to Improve Children’s Learning Experiences in the Kindergarten Classroom (Taylor & Boyer, 2020)
"This paper explores the defnition of play-based learning (PBL), the theoretical frameworks and historical research that have shaped PBL, the diferent types of play, the social and academic benefts of PBL, and the ways in which educators can facilitate, support, assess, and employ technology to enhance PBL."
PEDAL Hub
"We’re the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development, and Learning based in the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge. A key aim of the PEDAL Hub is to bring play research and ideas to families, schools, charities, researchers, policy makers, and play enthusiasts!"
Interrogating the "gold standard": Play-based early childhood education and perpetuating white supremacy
This article examines the role of play-based early childhood programs in perpetuating or interrupting messages of white supremacy which murder the spirits of Black children while reinforcing a sense of entitlement in white children. It asks educators to consider what children's play might look like if pro-Black teaching and anti-racist teaching that develops children's critical consciousness around race were explicit, foundational, and daily in ECE classrooms.
Early childhood teacher involvement in children’s socio-dramatic play: creative drama as a scaffolding tool
This study emphasizes the importance of scaffolding during play by exploring the ways in which early childhood (EC) teachers provide guidance during children’s socio-dramatic play and how they employ creative drama in their play interactions.
The Contribution of Play Experiences in Early Literacy: Expanding the Science of Reading (Rand & Morrow, 2021)
Rand and Morrow note that the many interpretations of the SOR as having a narrow focus on decoding have led to reports emphasizing the need for teaching reading skills in preschool and kindergarten, which has resulted in “many teachers believ[ing] that there is not enough time to use play in kindergarten because of the pressure to meet academic standards (Lynch, 2015).” This article extends the SOR to emphasize “that enriched play environments encourage a variety of emergent literacy behaviors,” highlighting the potential of “planned play experiences and games that are scaffolded by adult guidance.”

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