The Message Player On the screen Ideas • Read and discuss the messages with your child. Having the messages read by an adult encourages talking about maths, and also encourages the child to try to read the messages for themselves. • Use the message to talk about days of the week. If today is Monday, what day will it be tomorrow? What day was it yesterday? Talk about things that you do on specific days of the week. • Give them a diary (or make one with them) to check the day and date. Explore together to see where else the same day and date are displayed (eg on the computer, on tv, or in tv guides and newspapers). They could do a drawing of any Numberjacks: Mission to Learn activity they have done that day and put it in their diary.  • Children could draw some of the things that they found when trying either of the mini missions. If you have a digital camera, they could record some of the things with photos. The Message Player shows a new message every day, encouraging a use of time and dates.  Messages are shown as text and also voiced, to encourage early reading for a purpose, with many words being repeated from message to message to aid familiarity. The messages give Agents mini-missions to try out around the home or when out and about, with a different selection of ideas each day. The Secret Messages use the child's own data to personalise the messages and the maths. The child can click on the Message Player at any time to repeat that day's Message and Secret Message. Clicking the Blue Arrow shows the Secret Message. Clicking the Loudspeaker icon repeats the Message.