Fisher Price Fridays - School Days Play Desk

In honor of school being out for the year here in Arizona I thought I'd show the School Days Play Desk #176 on Fisher Price Friday.  I found my desk at a local antique mall for a great price (around $12).

The School Days Play Desk is a plastic set with a steel magnetic chalkboard on top made between 1972-1990.  It came with many accessories including magnetic letters, magnetic numbers and cards.  I have all the letters but they are often shared between this set and the Play Family School #923.  It also came with an eraser and a small box of chalk which I do not have.

 

The desk has sweet wood grain lithographs on each side.  The left has the number #176, flowers, a little bird and the letters A B C.  The right side has A B C drawn in a heart, the fisher price logo and more flowers.  There are no lithographs on the back of the desk or in the front.

The magnetic letters rest in this tray which slides underneath the cards.  The tray is the same one used in the Play Family School set.  A later version of the desk had a brown tray.

The top of the desk has a compartment with sliding doors to keep the extra letters, numbers, chalk and eraser.  It can open from either the right or the left side.  There are lithographs on each door with words and pictures from the cards included in the set.

On the front of the desk there is a compartment to store the cards.  You can also see the alphabet tray stored underneath as well.

The original (older) desk set came with 16 "dull" white cards with white backing.  The newer versions had only 14 cards that were bright white.  

I have 14 of the older cards (dull white).  They have the sweetest little colored drawings that go along with the words.  The 16 possible cards are: bath, bed, big, dog, draw, eat, face, milk, rain, room, snow, swim, tie, tree and the numbers 12345 and 67890.  I'm missing bed and milk.

The cards are designed to slide into groves on the bottom of the chalkboard.  The child can match up the letters to the spaces on the card and also write the word on the top of the board with chalk.  My daughter was able to match up the letters from a very young age.  It is a great way to practice letters and words.

So there you go, a fun little school set that you can carry around by the plastic handle on top.

Have a great summer everyone!