Award-winning! Smart Work 2026: The Shooting Stars Resource Bank

We want to approach our work with a developmental mindset while emphasizing the importance of language-aware learning. The starting point for our group’s resource bank, which serves as a daily tool, is child-centredness, functionality, and learning through play. (HML Vasu 2022, 48.)

The idea for creating the resource bank came about when one child’s parent expressed a wish to know which songs we sing at the early education centre, since the child also sings them a lot at home. We considered how we could bring activities familiar from early childhood education into homes in as inclusive a way as possible. In spring 2025, we sent the families in our group a link via the Päikky app containing a collection of the games and songs we play and sing with the children in our group at the centre.

Based on the positive feedback we received from families, we began thinking about how we could further enrich the material we had created. In addition to the digital material, we wanted to create a concrete resource bank to support our work and for use with our group of children. We put together games and activities—both familiar and new to the children—along with rhymes, riddles, and rhyming pairs, and organized them into two “play bags” with different content. Families in our group can also borrow these “play bags” to take home.

A variety of games, activities, rhymes, riddles, and rhyming pairs help develop language skills, attentiveness, concentration, and social and emotional skills in a safe environment. The resource bank also works wonderfully in the spirit of Hämeenlinna’s joint “Language, Mind, Reading” project for basic education and early childhood education, offering material that comprehensively supports young children’s language development.

Through the resource bank we have created—the play bag and the digital material—we want to make it possible for families to borrow material to take home if they wish. The idea is that the material we have made will support the learning of Finnish, as well as each family’s own native language at home, in a well-rounded way. This fulfils, in an inclusive way, the task of early childhood education to promote children’s holistic growth, development, and learning in cooperation with guardians. (OPH 2022, 16.)

Developers

Tiia Peltoniemi, Early Childhood Education Teacher, Ojoinen Early Education Centre
Mervi Hämäläinen, Early Childhood Education Childminder, Ojoinen Early Education Centre
Heidi Pääkkönen, Early Childhood Education Childminder, Ojoinen Early Education Centre