Scratch Programming 1

Scratch projects are made up of objects called sprites. You can change how a sprite looks by giving it a different costume. You can make a sprite look like a person or a train or a butterfly or anything else. You can use any image as a costume: you can draw an image in the Paint Editor, import an image from your hard disk, or drag in an image from a website.

You can give instructions to a sprite, telling it to move or play music or react to other sprites. To tell a sprite what to do, you snap together graphic blocks into stacks, called scripts. When you click on a script, Scratch runs the blocks from the top of the script to the bottom.

Here is an excellent introductory video all about programming in Scratch.



Scratch Cards

"Scratch Cards" provide a quick free way of beginning to learn Scratch code. They are small PDF documents that can be folded and glued into cards. They cover how to: Change color, Move to a beat, Key moves, Say something, Glide, Follow the mouse, Dance twist, Interactive whirl, Animate it, Moving animation, Surprise button, Keep Score. A zip file of the set of cards can be downloaded.

Click the following link to go to Scratch Cards:
http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Support/Scratch_Cards.
Here you can download the cards individually, or else get the zip file of all the cards.

Also downloaded is an excellent 23 page Scratch reference Guide PDF as part of the zip file.

To download and install the Scratch programming tools, go to this web page http://scratch.mit.edu/ .

The download will supply the Scratch Programming Interface:



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Let's take a look at the free Scratch cards.

Here is a typical beginner's scratch card:



Here is a short YouTube video on how to do the exact same thing, but this time to a Fish rather than a Butterfly.



We followed the color change instructions, and then added a few extra blocks to create a Butterfly that will move across the screen.

Also we edited the Background to be black by "edit" and then drawing a big black rectangle over it.



Here is the resulting Scratch Project.
Click the Green Flag to start, and then keep pressing the space bar.

Here is another basic Scratch Tutorial that creates a "Dancing" clip.

We do this by animating a sprite picture, and then adding sound. Here is a video on the steps to follow:




Here are the Code Blocks we made for the "Dancing Queen Project":



Here is the completed Scratch project. Make sure your speakers are on, and click the Green Flag to start, and the Red dot to stop.

So download those Scratch cards from
http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Support/Scratch_Cards
and get into learning Scratch.

And if you want some more "watch and do" videos, then check out this page: http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Video_Tutorials .

And finally, thanks to Darrel Branson who put me onto these excellent resources.

Enjoy,
Big Passy Wasabi