Book Image

Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

If you have the imaginative power to design complex multimedia projects but can't adapt to programming languages, then Scratch 1.4: Beginner's Guide is the book for you. Imagine how good you'll feel when you drag-and-drop your way to interactive games, stories, graphic artwork, computer animations, and much more using Scratch even if you have never programmed before. This book provides teachers, parents, and new programmers with a guided tour of Scratch's features by creating projects that can be shared, remixed, and improved upon in your own lesson plans. Soon you will be creating games, stories, and animations by snapping blocks of "code" together. When you program you solve problems. In order to solve problems, you think, take action, and reflect upon your efforts. Scratch teaches you to program using a fun, accessible environment that's as easy as dragging and dropping blocks from one part of the screen to another. In this book you will program games, stories, and animations using hands-on examples that get you thinking and tinkering. For each project, you start with a series of steps to build something. Then you pause to put our actions into context so that you can relate our code to the actions on Scratch's stage. Throughout each chapter, you'll encounter challenges that encourage you to experiment and learn. One of the things you're really going to love is that, as you begin working through the examples in the book, you won't be able to stop your imagination and the ideas will stream as fast as you can think of them. Write them down. You'll quickly realize there are a lot of young minds in your home, classroom, or community group that could benefit from Scratch's friendly face. Teach them, please.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Scratch 1.4 Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Scratch Resources
Index

Time for action – give mom flowers


Let's put some finishing touches on our card for mom and add a vase of flowers:

  1. Select the choose new sprite from file button in the sprites list.

  2. Browse to Costumes | Things. Select the vase of flowers and click OK to add the flowers to the stage.

  3. Scratch places the flowers in the middle of the stage, so we need to drag the vase to a place on the stage where it fits into the design.

  4. We should add a personal note for mom on her birthday. Click the Paint a new sprite button to display the Paint Editor.

  5. Type a personal note in any typeface and size you find appropriate. I like to joke with my mom, so for my message, I typed So, I hear you're 29 again this year. I'm happy to say you don't look a day over 30.

  6. Click OK to add the new sprite to the stage. Again, you can position the sprite anywhere on the stage. You may even need to resize the sprite to make your message fit in a certain area.

  7. To resize the sprite on the stage, select the shrink sprite tool from the...