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Turtle Graphics Labs

These labs are ideal for students that have never done programming before. It will slowly introduce them to the concepts we used to write a program. The goal is to keep the number of blocks small but still teach the key concepts. These labs will be repeated in the Python curriculum once students gain keyboarding skills.

Labs Ready to Run

Each lab is a complete lesson with a challenge, a starter program you can download and open in Scratch, and a solution you can reveal when you are ready.

Lab Level Time The Challenge
Draw a Square Beginner 20 min Cody draws one side and stops. Finish the program so he walks the whole square.

Planned Labs

The rest of this page is the plan for labs still to be written.

Sprite Movement Commands

Move a sprite in a square - we first need to understand the idea of an event that triggers the start of the program

  1. From Events Add the green "When Flag Clicked" Block
  2. From Motion Add the Move Foward
  3. Change Move Foward to be 100
  4. From the Motion Add the Turn Right
  5. Change the turn right to be 90
  6. Add more blocks to complete a square

Drawing with the Pen

Add the drawing extension and use the pendown - this lab is to get the students familiar with using the turtle to draw lines

  1. Add the pendown before the Move Foward
  2. Add the pen color block
  3. Change the pen color
  4. Change the pen size

Adding Variables

  1. Add a Variable for the Distance
  2. Add a Variable for the Angle

Adding a Loop

  1. Put the Forward and Right the for loop
  2. Change the Loop Count

Draw a Hexagon

  1. Change the angle to be 60
  2. Change the loop count to be 6

Change the Drawing Color for Even/Odd Steps in a Loop

  1. Conditionals Add a conditional block that will change the color