About the School Days Memory Game
New pencil cases in September, the squeak of chalk, the smell of poster paint — school days nostalgia hits everyone, whether you left last year or fifty years ago. A lovely deck for classrooms, grandparents and everyone between.
What's in the School Days deck
The full deck, so you know exactly what you're up against — 12 cards, 6 pairs: 🎒 Satchel✏️ Pencil📚 Books🍎 Apple🔔 School Bell📝 Homework🖍️ Crayon📏 Ruler🧮 Abacus🎨 Art Class📖 Story Time✂️ Scissors
Study tip: link the first three — satchel, pencil and books — into one ridiculous mental picture. Absurd images stick; lists don't. Then do the same for the next three, and the board will memorise itself.
How to memorise a learning deck
Learning decks — letters, numbers, colours — are the ones to play with your voice. Say each item out loud as you study the board: the label, not just the symbol. Spoken repetition loads both the visual and the phonological memory systems at once, which is exactly the double-encoding classroom practice relies on.
Test recall by naming, not just matching. After the board hides, ask "which letter was next to the butterfly?" — questions like that force retrieval, and retrieval is what turns a quick game into actual learning. Matching alone can be done on autopilot; naming cannot.
Fun Facts About School Days
- The blackboard was introduced to classrooms in the early 1800s and ruled for nearly two centuries.
- The abacus has been used for counting for over 2,000 years and is still used in some classrooms today.
- Giving an apple to the teacher dates back to times when families paid teachers partly in food.
- School bells once needed a person to ring them by hand at every break.
How to Play
Tap any card to flip it over, revealing the school item image underneath. Tap a second card — if the two match, they stay face up and you keep going. If not, they flip back after a moment. Your goal is to match every pair in as few moves as possible.
Three difficulty levels are available: easy (6 pairs), medium (8 pairs) and hard (12 pairs). Switch between them any time with the difficulty buttons above the board. Start on easy if you're new, or jump straight to hard for a proper brain workout.
Learning deck questions
Can these decks help with reading and counting?
As practice, yes — matching uppercase to pictures and saying letter names and numbers aloud reinforces what phonics and counting lessons teach. They are a supplement to teaching, not a replacement for it.
Which board should a five-year-old start on?
Easy — six pairs. The win rate matters more than the challenge at this stage: a child who beats the easy board three times will march to medium on their own, and one who loses hard boards twice will not.