Have you accumulated a lot of broken toys and damaged books and learning materials over the months, if not years? Instead of sending it straight through the garbage bin, why not consider repurposing them instead?

Loose parts basket

Having a child complete a puzzle down to its last few pieces and find that it’s missing a piece or two can definitely make that child feel upset, if not downright annoyed.
Going through your current sets of toys and putting those incomplete play sets will enhance a playtime that achieves its goal of entertaining and teaching kids skills.
Have a toy arm, a bucket missing its shovel, a couple of blocks from different sets, or even puzzles with missing pieces?
Put them in a loose parts basket which children can rummage through when they build something.

Use for learning aid

Got incomplete sets of learning cards for shapes, animals, plants, body parts or colors?
Post it on the wall to act as visual aids and learning prompts.
It also makes all your walls become extensions of past lessons and help children commit to memory what they’ve learned so far.

Collage or craft material

For damaged storybooks with missing pages, don’t be so hasty in throwing them away.
The other pages can become your source material for cutouts for other visual learning aids.
It can also be repurposed as collage material.
If you’re training the children’s fine motor skills, you can have them cut craft materials out of the story books.

Sensory materials

Playdoughs are one of the best toys to have for children but it’s also one of the most used and abused play materials.
Give it a second life by putting it in your sensory play area as a decoration.
Stick it to the wall to indicate the area or line each play area with a mixed playdough border to enforce enough distancing and space for each child to play and create in.

Parts for building or engineering activities

Loose toy parts on its own look useless but when put into a creative child’s hands it can turn into something else.
Build your pile of engineering craft supplies from these incomplete, broken but still usable loose parts.
Help children become more resourceful, creative and imaginative by challenging them to build something new out of the engineering pile. You might just be surprised what they come up with.

Teacher counter

Whenever a child breaks or finds a toy that’s broken, ask them to put it on the teacher counter.
Sometimes children mistakenly bring a part home only to return it a day or two later.
Keeping the other part separate from complete toys makes it easier to reassemble it again.
However, if the missing part is lost forever, then you can easily re-assign it to the right area–whether it’s the loose parts bin, the sensory play area or the learning walls.

Centers and daycare definitely have a higher and faster consumption of toys, learning aids and other materials. Since most young children are yet to develop their fine motor skills to handle these learning aids with care, it cannot be helped that you’re going to end up with more loose parts than complete and functional toys most of the time.
However, it doesn’t mean it’s the end for these loose parts. Give them a new purpose in your classroom and see how it helps children unlock more creativity in them.