About the Turtles What's Missing? Game
Ancient mariners with built-in armour, turtles have been cruising the oceans since before the dinosaurs disappeared. A calm, lovely deck — and proof that slow and steady really does win the game.
What's in the Turtles deck
The full deck, so you know what to watch for — 12 pictures: 🐢 Turtle🌊 Wave🏖️ Nesting Beach🥚 Egg🐚 Shell🪸 Coral🌿 Seagrass🐠 Reef Fish🌙 Moonlit Hatch🏝️ Island💧 Splash🧭 Navigation
Study tip: link the first three — turtle, wave and nesting beach — 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 an animal board
Animal decks reward behaviour-linking. Give each creature a verb — the owl glides, the frog pounces, the crab scuttles sideways — and run the board once as a tiny nature documentary. Actions are far stickier than pictures alone because they recruit the motor memory you use for catching balls and typing passwords.
Group by habitat before you start: sea creatures along one edge, jungle in the middle, farm at the end. When a card hides, you will not remember "somewhere" — you will remember which neighbourhood it lived in, and that narrows twelve choices down to three or four.
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 Turtles
- Turtles have been around for over 200 million years — they shared the planet with dinosaurs.
- A turtle's shell is part of its skeleton — it can't crawl out of it.
- Sea turtles navigate thousands of kilometres using the Earth's magnetic field.
- Some tortoises live more than 150 years.
Animal deck questions
Are animal memory games good for young children?
They are the classic first memory game for a reason: the pictures are nameable, the sounds are fun to make, and children meet animals in books long before they can read. Start on the easy board and let the wins do the motivating.
What is the fastest way to learn this deck?
Say each animal's name out loud the first time the board is shown. Naming forces you to process the picture instead of just glancing at it, and the sound of the word gives you a second memory hook.