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Activity : Exploring Scratch

Ninja Instructions | Mentor Notes


This activity is intended to be one of the first activities you complete when you are new to Scratch. It is meant as a simple way for you explore a little bit about working with Scratch by dragging out and connecting the programming blocks. By the time you are done you will have learned how to connect blocks to write a simple program.


10-15 minutes


  1. Go to the Scratch website:
  4. If the tips section is visible on the right hand side of the screen you should hide it for now. You do this by clicking on the x in the upper left corner of the tips section
  5. Drag one of the blocks from the “Motion menu” () to the scripting area. For example:
  6. Click on the block to see what happens.
  7. Change the number in the circle of the block you chose.
    • Try a bigger number.
    • Try a smaller number.
    • Try a negative number.
      Notice how the action changes as you change the number.
  8. Play with the different Scratch blocks from several of the different Scratch menus Suggestion, focus on the, , , and menus for now. These are the ones you are likely to use as you first get started. But feel free to explore others if you like.
  9. Snap several blocks together. See what happens when you click on one of the blocks in the group. For example:
  10. Go into the Control Menu () and find the “hat block” that is called the “green flag block” This is called a hat block because it looks a little bit like a baseball hat from the side.
  11. Connect this block to the top of your existing block stack so that it looks like this:

    It is ok to test code by clicking directly on small blocks of code, but all code used in finished Scratch programs should always begin with a “hat block” such as the green flag block.
  12. Now press the green flag icon at the top of the stage:

Congratulations. You have just learned how to write a simple program in Scratch!

lev0/act_exploringscratch_s.txt · Last modified: 2015/03/06 10:47 by jbschafer