About the School Days What's Missing? 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 what to watch for — 12 pictures: 🎒 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. When a picture vanishes, replay the scene and ask what doesn't fit any more.
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.
How to Play
- Press Start and memorise every picture on the board.
- After a few seconds the board hides and one picture is removed.
- Pick the missing picture from the answer choices.
- Each correct answer adds a bigger board. Three misses ends the game.
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.
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.