A Plea to Add Open-Ended Materials to Your Playroom
IF YOU GIVE A TWO-YEAR-OLD A COOKIE…
Open-ended materials first stole my heart while observing at my lab school in college. A two-year-old boy asked if I wanted “cookies” and I obliged. He grabbed some round pieces of cork, spread them out on a baking sheet, then placed them in a play kitchen oven. After his “timer” went off, he pulled a small drawer knob from a basket and pretended to salt them, as you do with cookies.
I thought… WOW. This toddler just engaged in some major abstract thought as he used cork and knobs to represent two entirely different items. If that classroom had been stocked with toy food, he wouldn’t have had that opportunity. That day the round piece of cork was a cookie, but the next it could have become a wheel on a car, the opportunities were endless! A plastic cookie however? That can only ever be a cookie.
WHAT ARE OPEN-ENDED MATERIALS?
Open-ended materials are items that can be played with in many ways. Rather than having one use, they can be interpreted and repurposed in diverse types of play.
At Boulder Journey School where I completed my teaching residency, all educators have access to a materials room stocked with small collections of everyday items. Fabric, coat hangers, envelopes, bottle caps, cardboard pieces and natural materials were organized neatly in a central location for teachers to borrow and return at their leisure.
I’ll pause and acknowledge that these aren’t your typical toys! The practice of offering open-ended materials might seem foreign and you may even feel something of an obligation to provide your child with “nicer” toys, but trust me, the ways children end up using these will endlessly surprise and intrigue you!
In our toddler classroom, yoga blocks became balance beams, PVC pipes acted as ramps for cars and trucks, and peanut butter lids morphed into stamps as one-year-olds rolled them across clay.
WHERE DO THEY FIT IN?
Age/stage specific toys are incredibly popular right now. They are helpful for honing certain skills and hitting developmental milestones, but once your child reaches that learning goal, they’ll quickly move on to a new challenge. Additionally, kids are always going to ask for the brightly-colored, plastic, branded toys at Target, but this shouldn’t be the foundation for your playroom.
Open-ended materials grow with your child and offer a longevity that other toys don’t. Those yoga blocks that provided gross motor challenge to toddlers could easily transform into building blocks for a pre-kindergartener. The PVC pipe car ramps could become tent poles for a 9-year-old’s custom fort. Incorporating these into your playroom might feel strange at first, but once you witness the absolute magic they invite into your children’s play, you’ll come to love them!
