Activities/Turtle Art/Getting started

Getting Started

Start by clicking on (or dragging) blocks from the Turtle palette. Use multiple blocks to create drawings; as the turtle moves under your control, colorful lines are drawn.

You add blocks to your program by clicking on or dragging them from the palette to the main area. You can delete a block by dragging it back onto the palette. Click anywhere on a "stack" of blocks to start executing that stack or by clicking in the Rabbit (fast) , Turtle (slow) or Bug (debug) buttons on the Project Toolbar.

The basics

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  Basic turtle graphics: 'forward', 'back', 'arc', and 'right' blocks
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  The 'set color' block affects pen trails, fill and text
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  'set pen size' block
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  Pen up and pen down

Drawing shapes

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  Use the repeat block to draw shapes
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  This can be generalised to n sided polygons, store n in Box1
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  Use 'start fill' and 'end fill' to draw filled shapes

Boxes, Stacks and the Heap

(aka variables, subroutines and the stack)

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  named variables:'store in' block
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  Named 'stacks' of blocks can be reused
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  Collapse a 'stack' of blocks to save space
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  Store data in the first in last out heap using 'push' and 'pop'

Displaying things

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  Using 'print'
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  'print' and 'show' can display numbers including results of calculations
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  'print' with text and numbers
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  'show' block used for text
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  'show' an image or video
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  'show' the camera output
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  'show' plays sounds as well

Keyboard, mouse and sensor input

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  Reading the keyboard
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  Converting the keyboard output to a string
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  Getting a multi digit number [[1]]
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  Load the Python block with the sample code push_mouse_event.py to read mouse events
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  Read the microphone or external sensors

Mathematics

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  logical operations: 'if' block
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  Make pie charts
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  Use Python functions