Primary computing: coming soon – 2x print mini mags of A BIT OF CS4FN (Issue 4, and Primary Puzzles Issue 2) | Teaching London Computing: A RESOURCE HUB from CAS LONDON & CS4FN

• New free primary computing mini mags on their way!
• Wrangling our mailing list
• UK educators & librarians – sign up to receive free copies
• More about the Magazines
• … Looping gifs of the magazines’ contents
• …… Primary Puzzles – Issue 2
• …… A Bit of CS4FN – Issue 4
• Previous issues

New free primary computing mini mags on their way!

If you’ve subscribed to receive free print copies of our primary school mini magazines from A BIT OF CS4FN your next two issues will be arriving together. These are little A5 computing booklets aimed at ~8-12 year olds with stories about computing (see ‘More about the magazines‘ below) and some puzzles (the puzzles booklet is full of puzzles!).

We’re printing A Bit of CS4FN Issue 4 (below left) and Primary Puzzles Issue 2 (below right) together. This means that everyone who’s asked for a class set of 30 copies will receive 30 copies of Issue 4 AND 30 copies of Puzzles Issue 2 simultaneously (60x A5 magazines in total). This is what their covers look like.

I’m going to try and email everyone on our mailing list (!) and make sure they know to expect this larger mailing, starting with larger schools that have ordered more magazines. All going well the magazines should start to arrive in early November 2024 (after half term).

Wrangling our mailing list

Our mailing list pretty much never reflects actual reality though, despite our best efforts!

Occasionally a teacher moves on to a new school and so their old school might be slightly surprised to receive, on behalf of a teacher who’s no longer there, a box of magazines they’d not expected. Usually the new teacher that has replaced the teacher who left is happy to continue with the free subscription (and might get in touch to update the name and contact details on the subscription) but we like to check periodically, hence the emails.

If you are a computing teacher, librarian or home educator in the UK who’d like to receive free physical print copies of the magazines (these are specifically designed so that kids can write on them to fill in the puzzles) then you can sign up by clicking here or using the embedded form below. If you’re outside the UK then regrettably we can’t post our magazines to you but you can download and print copies of them below (or click on the pictures above), absolutely free!

A Bit of CS4FN – Primary Puzzles Issue 2
A Bit of CS4FN – Issue 4
For both magazines we also have free certificates which you can print and give to your class – there are certificates for completists who’ve solved every puzzle and ones for anyone who’s given some of the puzzles a go.

More about the Magazines

After several years of producing CS4FN (Computer Science For Fun) for secondary school kids we wanted to create something for a younger primary audience and A Bit of CS4FN is the result. Primary school teachers often teach the whole curriculum, not just computing, so we included a variety of subjects within the magazines, with a computing twist. A history lesson about the Romans for example could include making a link with the art of mosaics and how these are very similar to pixels used by computers to store images. Or a computing lesson about storing images could highlight Roman mosaicists being able to send (transmit!) copies of their patterns around the Roman Empire for local mosaicists to recreate. Teachers have told us that they use the magazines as non-fiction reading material for their reading box, and use the stories and ideas as classroom discussion points.

The puzzle booklets just contain puzzles – these are self-contained but can also be used to highlight aspects of computer science and computational thinking. For example the need to pay close attention to ‘spot the difference’ uses the same sort of skills and pattern-matching as a computer scientist might use to spot bugs in their code…

You can see what’s in them below.