Traditional games – Lost Treasure - ENO Schoolnet Association

Traditional Games – Lost Treasure is a twinning school project between Karlovac Primary School in Croatia and Marjala School in Finland. The aim of this project is to introduce new generations to the joy of playing forgotten games from the past. The project lasts one year from Jan 2025 until end of December 2025.

In early childhood, play plays a crucial role in shaping attitudes, adapting to the environment, and developing social and communication skills. The main goal of this project is to benefit all students by enhancing their physical, psycho-motor, emotional, social, and mental well-being while spending time outdoors with their peers. Playing games fosters imagination, creativity, and movement coordination. No activity proposal excites children more than an invitation to play.

The rapid development of technology has led to the near disappearance of traditional children’s games. With this project, we aim to revive them, encouraging students to play outdoors with their peers and reduce their screen time. This is also a great opportunity for them to learn and follow rules, norms, and principles of behavior while playing together.

We hope this project will guide students at the earliest school age to appreciate tradition and the richness of returning to natural movement, being in nature, and socializing. Additionally, the project promotes cultural exchange between these two schools and countries while enhancing English language communication skills.

You can follow the project’s progress on this blog.

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PROJECT BLOG

Date: 31 jan 2025

HULA LOOP

One of the traditional games of our region is Hula Hoop. Hula-hoop is a simple plastic hoop that originated in Ancient Greece as a toy for children. The goal of the player is to keep the hoop moving for as long as possible, i.e. by swinging his waist and hips. so that he does not fall to the ground.

At first it was not easy for us to spin the Hula Hoop, but in any case we had a lot of fun and laughed.

Text and photos: Teacher Vladimira Fumic, Karlovac primary school, Croatia

Date: 14 Feb 2025

RETRO TOYS EXHIBITION

As part of the project, we visited the Retro Toys exhibition. There we looked at many toys that our parents, grandparents used to play with. It was very interesting, because all these toys were new to us. We have never seen most of them. We liked the old board games the most, which some even have at home, because their parents managed to preserve them.

Text and photos: Teacher Vladimira Fumic, Karlovac primary school, Croatia

Date: 14 Feb 2025

THE BEAR IS SLEEPING

The bear is sleeping

Finland is known for its nature and forests, and therefore those two are very common topics in traditional Finnish games. A game called “the bear is sleeping” is a tag that is inspired from Finland’s beautiful nature and our national animal, the mighty bear.

In this game, one of the players is a bear, who is the tagger. Other players form a circle around the bear and start walking, singing:

“The bear is sleeping, the bear is sleeping, in its winter den.

There seems to be no danger, we can keep on playing.

The bear is sleeping, the bear is sleeping,

It’s not sleeping anymore!!”

When the players sing “it’s not sleeping anymore”, the bear awakes and starts chasing others. The player who gets caught first becomes the new bear. A variation is that all the players who get caught become bear cubs and the number of taggers increases.

This game can be played indoors and outdoors and on many different surfaces. Our class practiced skating and played this game on ice. It was fun!

Here’s a Youtube-link for the song:

https://youtu.be/-NgKirS4GQM?si=J1qCaGKfhr62KwRT

Text & photos: Teacher Pauliina Ryhänen, Marjala School, Joensuu, Finland

Date: 24 March 2025

WINTER FUN IN MARJALA

Hello, everyone!

Here is class 4B from Marjala-school, Joensuu, Finland. In our class we have 19 pupils and our teacher Johanna. We want to show you all these very traditional winter “games”, that we have here in Finland.

Sliding on a sled hill is the funniest thing, that children can do in the winter. We have a small sled hill in our schoolyard, so we can have fun there during our breaks. Another great thing is sliding with skis. We also have place for that really near to our school. Third thing is snowshoeing. We had great fun last week, when we were doing that on a very sunny day.

You can watch our activites from this video:

Text and photos: Teacher Johanna Koukkunen, Marjala School, Joensuu, Finland

Date: 1 April 2025

WATER IN YOUR SHOE

“Water in your shoe!”

In this traditional, fun game, players are divided into two equal teams. One team steps outside the classroom, while the other remains inside. The group inside then selects a partner for each player from those waiting outside.

One player at a time enters the classroom, approaches someone, and asks: “Are you my friend?”. If the guess is correct, the answer is: “Sit next to me!” or “Buns in the oven!”. Then the two players sit together. If the guess is wrong, the response is: “Water in your shoe!”. The player who made the incorrect guess must hop back outside on one foot and try again later.

The game continues until everyone has found their partner.

This traditional team-building game is loved by pupils of all ages and can be used with groups who know each other’s names. Additionally, it can be adapted for learning, such as when studying new words in a foreign language.

Text and photos: Teacher Pauliina Ryhänen, Marjala School, Joensuu, Finland

Date: 27 May 2025

DO YOU KNOW HOPSCOTCH?

This very commong children’s play must be played around the world – but how? In Croatia this game is called

Hopscotch (Školica) and is very traditional Croatian children’s game played by drawing numbered squares on the ground, usually from 1 to 9. Players toss a small object (like a stone) into the correct square, then hop through the squares on one foot—skipping the one with the object—before turning and returning. It’s a fun way for children to develop balance, coordination, and counting skills while playing outdoors.

How do you play it, and what do you call the game in your country?

Please send us an email at info@enoprogramme.org with photos, videos, and any variations of how it is played.

The emails, photos, and videos you send will be published under this post and shared with others.

Text and photos: Teacher Vladimira Fumic, Karlovac primary school, Croatia

Date: 28 Oct 2025

Games Our Grandparents Played

This school year, for the project Traditional Games – Lost Treasure, we started with an interesting activity. Students were given the task of interviewing their moms, dads, grandmothers, or grandfathers over the weekend to find out what games they played in their youth. Each student received a piece of paper on which they had to draw or write about the game and then presented their research to the other students in the class. Here are some of the works.

Text and photos: Teacher Vladimira Fumic, Karlovac primary school, Croatia

Date: 10 Nov 2025

Teddy Nalle’s Adventures – Do you know these games?

1. Nalle and I were playing a very traditional finnish board game called “Afrikan tähti” (Star of Africa). It was invented in 1951. It’s main goal is to find a diamond called Star of Africa and bring it back to the starting point.