Culturally Sustaining Care and Education through Loose Parts Play with Natural Desert Materials

• In Event: Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Pedagogies and Our Futures: Dynamic Stories and Practices from PK-6 Communities

Abstract

Purpose: Home daycare providers and community organizations are well-positioned to enrich Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP). Collaborations across community organizations allows for sharing of expertise on early education and ancestral plant knowledge, and tightening of community bonds. We share curricularizing around natural loose parts play toward right relationship with land developed through our Community-Based Participatory Research involving home daycare providers, university faculty, an ancestral foodways organization, and a mobile children’s museum.
Perspectives:
In 2022, Nash et al. included, “right, reciprocal relationships with the land” as one feature of CSELPs for early childhood education. This premise rejects environmentally destructive settler capitalism and seeks to sustain “what we love. . . and revitaliz[e] that which for centuries sustained us” (Paris & Alim, 2017, p. 12).
From time immemorial, children have played with rocks, sticks, shells, and other loose parts found in the natural environment. Recently, loose parts play has become popular in early education through the work of Beloglovsky and Daly (2016) who promote play with natural and re-used objects as sustaining and economical approaches to supplying children with open-ended play materials.


Methods and Data Sources:
Throughout 2024 two home daycare providers, a university professor, and a representative from a local educational coalition gathered in each other’s homes to share meals and deepen CSP for zero- to three-year-olds. The university professor visited the home daycares to observe and support culturally sustaining care and education.
Our thinking about environmental sustainability developed as we applied CSP to loose parts play and piloted loose parts play with local natural materials in the home daycares and mobile children’s museum. In 2025, we partnered with representatives from an ancestral foodways organization to deepen our understanding around sustainable harvesting practices and safe use of local plants.


Findings:
In the two home daycares and the mobile children’s museum, very young children demonstrated deep interest in the materials, and adults engaged in cultural exchanges about the materials. At one home daycare, play took place outside where children counted mesquite pods and grouped them in patterns. Some children’s faces lit up with recognition, exclaiming, “We have these in my backyard!” At the other home daycare, teachers placed mesquite pods in the play kitchen where children engaged in complex cooperative play. One young girl asked for the long, pointed pods to be taped to her fingers to represent the acrylic fingernails popular in her community, rehearsing contemporary cultural practices. At the mobile children’s museum, mesquite seed pods and other natural materials sparked fond memories for families, offered opportunities for very young children to explore, and inspired one young toddler to long-term observation. In addition to interactions with children, at research meetings, in home daycares and at the mobile museum, natural play materials inspired adults to share cultural knowledge.

Significance: This study builds upon CSP in secondary and elementary education to curricularize CSP for our youngest learners. To honor the community roots of asset-based pedagogies and deepen pedagogical and cultural knowledge, this study also offers a unique approach to authentic community-based participatory research.

Authors

• Rhianna K. Thomas, New Mexico State University

• Leanna Lucero, New Mexico State University

• Adriana V Cardenas, New Mexico State University

• Rubi Orozco, La Semilla Food Center

• Abeer Al-Ghawi, Ngage New Mexico

• Christina Ruybal, NMSU School for Young Children

• Abigail Wisniewski, NMSU School for Young Children

• Olga Grays, Ms. Olga’s Daycare