The Reception children have been preparing for our forthcoming trip to the London Aquarium by learning all about the anatomy of sharks. The children have become experts in recognising the different body parts, and how these are useful for sharks as they swim and hunt in the sea. Plenty of singing has also been used to help understand a little more about sharks. One of the current class favourites is the catchy Baby Shark song. Our maths work in the Michael Faraday Reception classes has been looking at what is meant by the phrases long and short. The children have seen how it is useful to compare different items that we are looking at if we want to comment on how long, or how short they are. The children were given a ruler each as a reference point. They were asked to find as many items in the Reception classroom that were longer than the ruler. A large sheet of paper was then used to draw and represent all of our observations. This work has also led the children to think about big numbers. We have been improving on our counting skills by working all the way through to 100 on the school number line. A number of learning books have also been used to help with this activity. These include How Much is a Million, How Many Jelly Beans, Centipede’s 100 Shoes and Ten Little Pirates. It would be wonderful to continue with this learning if parents and carers have access to these books at home. Finally we would like to remind parents and carers about the home reading system that the teaching staff have recently introduced in the Michael Faraday Reception. Each class member now has a set day when they will be taking a library book home. Regular reading with an adult would greatly benefit each pupil. It would also help if the books were returned back to school on the weekday assigned to each pupil. The teaching staff are looking forward to hopefully welcoming as many parents and carers into our class on 1 December for an adult reading workshop. Some of the techniques that we use to help improve the reading skills of the children will be explained. One of the main ideas is how to make reading fun!