Under the shade of the trees in Belconnen's John Knight Memorial Park, children are playing with objects you would commonly find around the house.
They use boxes to build towers, sheets are made into tents and planks of wood become ramps for toy cars.
All the while University of Canberra occupational therapists, speech pathologists and nutrition students observe and chat to their parents.
The loose parts playgroup pops up in different suburbs of Belconnen each day as part of a larger study led by Dr Vicky Saunders and funded by a Medical Research Future Fund Grant.
Liliana Grace has been attending twice per week with her two-year-old daughter, Abigail, and her 12-week-old son since February.
"It's really good. At first my daughter didn't really know what to do but then she started watching the facilitators and they started playing together and now every time we come and she just explores by herself and plays with all sorts of things," Ms Grace said.
University of Canberra's Health Research Institute director Professor Rachel Davey, who is one of the chief investigators of the Good Start in Life project, said while many children in Canberra were thriving, some were falling through the gaps in terms of their development.
"Some of the national data from the Australian Early Development Census over the last five years show that there are certain areas in Canberra which are declining, and so increasingly there's children at risk of developmental vulnerability," Professor Davey said.
"So they're falling behind in areas like physical health, their social language and communication skills and emotional development.
"And so this project is really trying to target areas at risk with a high number of children with those issues by providing more integrated services and access for young children and their families."
The loose parts play encourages unstructured play between children where they can develop their creativity, problem solving skills, fine and gross motor skills and communication and language skills.
"The beauty of the park playgroup pop-ups is that you can literally have them in most public places and you don't need high-tech equipment or special things," she said.
The researchers are collecting qualitative and quantitative data on the impact of the intervention strategy. The real measure of success will be if markers improve on the next Australia Early Development Census in 2024.
Ms Grace said she's had interesting discussions with the facilitators.
"I spoke to one of the speech pathologists at the Charnwood location about raising bilingual kids. They've all been really friendly and very helpful and they play with the kids as well."
The playgroups are held each day between 9:30am and 11:30am, at the locations listed below:
- Monday: John Knight Memorial Park, Belconnen
- Tuesday: Charnwood Place, Charnwood (behind the supermarket)
- Wednesday: John Knight Memorial Park, Belconnen
- Thursday: Aranda sportsground, Aranda
- Friday: Charnwood Place
