How to Get Started with Scratch
Hello. Today I will talk about a website that’s free that you can code, (move blocks to make things happen) animate, and much more. I will be talking about Scratch.
What Is Scratch?
Scratch is a free-to-use coding website in which you can make your own games, animations,
Music Videos, Art, Stories, and Tutorials. In Scratch, you have to drag blocks into the little coding area and combine them to make, for example, make a person move 10 steps or make someone turn around.
How To Use Scratch?
To use Scratch, head to https://scratch.mit.edu/.
First, you must make an account. Then you are free to make anything you want. I will teach you some basics now.
1. Always use the “When Green Flag Clicked” block to make the object/person do when the coder presses the flag.
3. Go to the button right corner and see a little cat icon and a + sign above him. drag your mouse/finger over it then press choose a sprite. (sprites are objects/things like you and me and you can choose from a lot of different sprites.)
4. drag your finger/ mouse over the button on the button right corner to see another button in which there is a little image of something and a + sign above it again. when you’ve dragged your finger/mouse on it, click/press on ” Choose A Backdrop” and then you can choose from a lot of different backdrops. (backdrops are backgrounds but called something else)
More Tips for Scratch
I’m not the only one who knows about Scratch. Many more people make tutorials and things like that. So here are some links: www.create-learn.us/blog/scratch-tutorial-for-kids/, https://www.coursera.org, and look up videos of maybe even better tutorials than me!
When making games, remember to save them or you’ll lose them for good. Because I think there’s no auto-save. So before closing Scratch when you’re done, make sure you’ve saved your game.
Last Tip: I will talk about what each colour you’ll see on the side of the coding area means. Blue: Blue has most of the action stuff like moving forward 10 steps, or turning 15 degrees and going to X 60 or Y 32, and stuff like that. Purple: Purple is about Looks. Like to say hello or go to the next costume, (the costume is the object but changed a little like a flipbook.) or go to the next backdrop.
That’s Mainly it. Yellow: Yellow has blocks for events like broadcast message 1, and broadcast message 2. It’s mainly about actions on backdrops and sprites.
- Pinkish: Pinkish is about sound. Like Popping sounds, instruments like Paino, guitar, and many more.
- Orange: Orange is about Control. What I mean by that is blocks that can control other blocks. Like repeat block, repeat forever block, If Then blocks, stop all blocks and wait and until, and many more controlling blocks.
- Light Blue: Light blue is about Sensing. like what your name blocks and mouse X and mouse Y, reset the timer, key space pressed? and more.
- Green: Green is about Operators. like ” ?+?=” and pick random 1 to 10. Operators are pretty hard to tell so I’m going to skip and if you really wanna know maybe in a later post I can explain more.
- Dark Orange: Dark Orange is about Variables. Aka likes a score. so let’s say that you touch a ball and gain a point. Variables can help. make your own by pressing the make your own Variable and then it will show at the right top a little icon that says Score or whatever you named it.
- My Blocks: I don’t know much about this because I just started 2 months ago so if you want to know about this NOW either check out other tutorials or wait for me to explain more about this.
That’s Everything you really need to know. and if I didn’t explain everything either tell me or don’t. Here is one of my game links. ( No Toxic bullying if they suck in your opinion please(:)
Baseball Vs Apple on Scratch (mit.edu) or just look it up in scratch.
Recommended Resources
Here are some additional resources I recommend for learning Scratch:
- https://www.cs.ubc.ca/girlsmarts4tech/resources/4girls/scratch.html
- Official Scratch Team’s Youtube Tutorials
- See projects created by people using Scratch
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