A Book For Young Programmers On Scratch. - Denis Golikov, Artem Golikov (easy readers txt) 📗

A Book For Young Programmers On Scratch.

Denis Golikov & Artem Golikov

Copyright Denis Golikov & Artem Golikov 2013

All rights reserved.

translator Elizaveta Hesketh

License Notes.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of author.

Table of Contents.

Introduction.

Chapter 1. How Scratch is built. The first program.

Chapter 2. Making the first program more expanded.

Chapter 3. Cyclical program flow.

Chapter 4. Another simple cartoon.

Chapter 5. A cartoon with costumes. A flying cat and a bat.

Chapter 6. A game about the adventures of Theseus Kitten.

Chapter 7. A cartoon with ghosts.

Chapter 8. A game with mines.

Chapter 9. A short cartoon about an evil butterfly.

Chapter 10. An animation cartoon about a bee.

Chapter 11. Playing on two levels.

Chapter 12. A game about a magician.

Chapter 13. The Cat-mathematician.

Chapter 14. The game «A Cat with a jet-propelled backpack».

Chapter 15. Communicating with the character.

Chapter 16. «Country capitals» trivia game.

Chapter 17. A platformer game.

Chapter 18. Cat bowling.

Appendix 1. Negative numbers.

Appendix 2. X and Y coordinates.

Appendix 3. Degrees.

Appendix 4. Numbers with a point.

Appendix 5. A floppy disk.

Appendix 6. The true story of the Cat and the Flying Dog.

Description.

The goal of the book is introduction into programming, mathematics, sciences for elementary school students.

The material is written for student self-study for Grade 3-5 students who have basic skills of operating a computer. Children have to be able to use «a mouse», start using labels, etc., as well as count to 480, multiply and divide. More complex mathematical notions (negative numbers, decimal fractions, coordinate axis, degrees) will be explained on the pages of the book.

Scratch is a new free programming environment that allows children from 7 years old to create their own stories, cartoons, games and other creation.

This program allows children to express themselves in computer creative work. Scratch was specifically created as a new learning environment for teaching school students programming.

You can create cartoons in Scratch, play with various objects, change them, move them on the screen, set up forms of interaction between objects. The programs are created of multi-colored blocks the same way as Lego construction sets are made of multi-colored bricks.

Scratch was created in 2006 under the supervision of Mitchel Resnick by a Lifelong Kindergarten group in MIT Media Lab.

Scratch works on Windows or Linux computers. It doesn't work on any tablets!

Each chapter requires about 20-30 minutes to study. It is not recommended to study more than two chapters per day.

How the book was created.

I am 37 years old. My background is in Computer Engineering, not in Programming. My son, Artem, got into programming on Scratch at 7 years of age. I started looking for books on Scratch on the Internet for children of 7-9 years old, but I could not find anything. All Scratch textbooks are for 11-13 years old children, though there is nothing difficult in Scratch. Having basic Math knowledge it is possible to use more than half of Scratch capabilities and make cool games and cartoons. After Artem had mastered Scratch, he got very upset once he learned that they would not be studying it at school and that other children, his friends and classmates would never learn about this interesting program. I made a decision to sacrifice my Sunday evenings to organize a club of programmers on Scratch. And so a year ago my son and I started teaching a club of young programmers on Scratch for kids of 8-11 years old. For each class Artem would think of a new game that would use new Scratch blocks. As a result, we have collected enough material for a whole book. In the fall of 2013 new children came to the club and the book was tested on them. The children made a few comments, I explained complex points in more detail, and now the book is published. Some children have already studied the whole book and are asking for a continuation! As of November 2013, the second book is already half finished. The children like studying the book a lot, because everything has been explained in great detail and does not require their parents' participation. The parents also like it because they can do their chores in the meantime.

All the examples from the book are published on the website http://scratch.mit.edu/users/scratch_book

You can ask questions to authors by:

scratch.book@ya.ru

http://facebook.com/ScratchBook4u

Introduction. For parents. How to download and install Scratch.

The program Scratch is downloaded for free from the Internet at http://info.scratch.mit.edu/ru/Scratch_1.4_Download (version 1.4). This is not the latest version of Scratch, however, it has everything necessary for interesting work and does not require an Internet connection. Version 2.0 works online in the browser and requires constant Internet connection.

Installing the program is as easy as can be.

We download the file ScratchInstaller1.4.exe from the provided link, we don't need to check for viruses, as this source is reliable.

We start ScratchInstaller1.4.exe and press «Next» several times (or «Continue»). By default, the program will install into the Program Files folder, and will create a folder called «Scratch Projects» in «My documents», that is where the created programs will be located. There will appear an icon on the desktop.

Parents are free. Come back in an hour, get the child off the computer, let him run around. If the child wants to continue his learning right away, he has to do no less than 100 squats.

Chapter 1. How Scratch is built. The first program.

Start Scratch from your icon on the desktop.

Press the square in the top right corner in order to expand Scratch to take up the whole screen. Now you can see very well that Scratch has three parts. There is a bunch of blue blocks on the left. The program will be working on the white background on the right. There is empty space in the middle, that is where we are going to put together a program of blocks, that is our working area.

Scratch has many blocks of different colors. We will be mainly using the navy blue, yellow, violet and light blue blocks.

Click your mouse on the names of blocks on the left at the top.

Now it is time to teach a cat how to run.

Let us choose the yellow «control» blocks at the top and drag the block «when space key pressed» to the center of the screen. In order to drag a block you need to click with your mouse on it and then drag, and not just click on it.

We

Text: Copyright Denis Golikov & Artem Golikov 2013
Translation: Elizaveta Hesketh
Publication Date: 03-28-2014

All Rights Reserved