Join live or receive a link to the recording and earn a CE certificate
- This event has passed.
Loose Parts Kits and Collections: Developing a Loose Parts Mindset with Limitless Possibilities!
Monday, August 7, 2023 @ 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm EDT
Presented by Dr. Carla Gull, Associate Professor, Merry Lea Environmental Education Learning Center of Goshen College
Moderated by Dr. Laura Wilhelm, Vice President for Professional Learning, Kaplan Early Learning Company
Sponsored by Kaplan Early Learning Company
Learn more about viewing the live presentation and the recording, earning your CE certificate, and using our new accessibility features.
Develop a loose parts mindset alongside Dr. Carla Gull using your own loose parts kits and collections and real objects from your environment. This edWebinar focuses on building awareness of kits or collections that you might have on hand, discovering new ways to use them, and defining kit types: homemade and commercially prepared.
When forming new collections, we’ll need to decide what to include and then select containers, labels, and storage. We explore funding options and opportunities to expand our professional networks creating swaps or kit experiences to share with other educators. We explore pro tips for organizing, maintaining, and storing loose parts kits for easy access and clean up along with strategies for optimizing children’s experimentation and exploration. You leave ready to maximize curiosity and creativity in your educational or play setting through loose parts collections and kits!
This recorded edWebinar is of interest to PreK-3 teachers and librarians.
About the Presenter
Dr. Carla Gull is the coordinator of the Master of Arts in Environmental Education Program and Associate Professor at Merry Lea Environmental Learning Center of Goshen College in northern Indiana. She has over 20 years of experience in the education field at the preschool, elementary, and college levels. Dr. Gull enjoys helping educators incorporate more nature in the everyday early childhood setting and in nature preschools. She hosts a podcast, Loose Parts Nature Play; facilitates an international group, Loose Parts Play; and presents workshops, presentations, and academic research around loose parts, tree climbing, STEM, outdoor classrooms, and nature education. She is co-author of the book Loose Parts Learning in K-3 Classrooms and the upcoming book Living Loose Parts: Creatures of Curiosity. She is the state coordinator for Indiana Children and Nature Network. She enjoys going on adventures and traveling with her husband and four (mostly teen!) boys.
About the Moderator
As the Vice President for Professional Learning at Kaplan, Laura Wilhelm, Ed.D. draws on decades of experience teaching young children and early childhood professionals, starting with toddlers in the 1980s, followed by PreK-third grade in urban and suburban schools, and as a university lab school director. Since earning her doctorate in ECE curriculum and instruction in 1999, she has served as a program director, full professor, national validator for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), and a site visitor for the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Programs (CAEP). She enjoys planning professional development, speaking at conferences, leading study tours, visiting early education programs around the world, and returning home to her family. She is the author of The Neglected Child: How to Recognize, Respond, and Prevent (2013); Treasure Baskets: Heuristic Learning for Infants and Toddlers (2017); Enticing Environments for People Under Three (2021); and Living Loose Parts: Creatures of Curiosity (coming in 2024), all from Gryphon House.
Learn more about viewing the live presentation and the recording, earning your CE certificate, and using our new accessibility features.
Join the Classroom Management for Early Learning community to network with educators, participate in online discussions, receive invitations to upcoming edWebinars, and view recordings of previous programs to earn CE certificates.
For more than 50 years, Kaplan Early Learning Company has been a champion for play. From our research-based curricula to enriching classroom environments and innovative technology solutions, Kaplan’s products and services inspire a lifelong love of learning in children and educators. We are architects of learning good and defenders of the imagination. We live for inseparable bonds and open minds. We encourage the eager and inspire the inspirers. We transform lives through play.
