The purpose of our project was to advance music education amongst early childhood education professionals. We pursued to compile a sheet music booklet to enlighten the basics of music pedagogy for them. Children’s music group Soiva Siili assigned us to create a product to be distributed in music workshops they have for professionals.

Our object was to create a sheet music booklet containing pedagogic explanations and play instructions for Soiva Siili. We pursued to mold our booklet into an easily understandable and practical guide to the basics of music pedagogy. We wanted to lower early childhood education professionals’ threshold of using music as a tool.

Our main data were Soiva Siili’s tunes which we used in our product. Our operation was based on holistic view of human beings. As we worked on the product, we explored Vygotsky’s theory of Zone of Proximal Development. We made our product as diverse as possible considering the substantive orientations mentioned in the National curriculum guidelines on early childhood education and care in Finland. We have empirically researched the basic requirements and functionality of the songs included in our booklet in different kind of groups. We also exploited the thesis of one of Soiva Siili’s founding members covering the significance of songs in striving for pedagogic objectives.

The feedback we received implied that we had already encouraged our respondents to use music in their work. We edited the final product into a more purposeful direction based on the feedback received from the test group. How favorable the final broader reception, remains to be seen.

The thesis process has encouraged us to research and develop the role of music in childhood education further. We work in a music kindergarten and in our work we have already composed several children’s songs, together with the children, about subjects of their interests. Of these songs, we might just create new, child-centeredness emphasizing products, such as music sheet booklets and records. It is clear that using music is still difficult for Finnish early childhood education. For our part, we have still encouraged the childhood educators and will continue to do so.