The Sound of Music - A Scratch Project

Hope the new school year has been going well for everyone. Sharing here a Scratch project that we worked on in the classroom before the summer vacations started. An interdisciplinary project, this one combines music with programming, and was intended to be a Father's Day gift from the kids to their dads. It came as a pleasant surprise that Scratch was having a similar theme that month (June 2016) for their Design Studio. 

Here are the sample Scratch projects that I created: one of my fav songs ever, Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music and the Carol of the Bells. Note that the sample projects are intended to be just a starting point to familiarize the students with the programming concepts that would be used in the assignment.

Aim

Create your own Music Project, using the instructions in the Sound section of Scratch.

Objective

Students learn to create their own piece of music using Scratch programming.

Catch the Star! - A Scratch Project

Over the past several weeks, I have been working with my child's classroom, focusing exclusively on Scratch! The kids LOVE it! :) We have been focusing mainly on game design, and of course, I try to make connections with the classroom syllabus at the same time. The class has been learning about the coordinate system and algebra over the last 2 months, hence the projects that I developed focus mainly on these two concepts.

I provided this sample program to get things started: Catch the Star! We went over the sample code and then the kids developed their own games using the concepts learned.

Aim:

Create a game where a sprite constantly glides from one end of the screen to the other (much like the chimneys in the popular Flappy Bird game on code.org). If another sprite hits it, you get/lose a point. 

A Musical Instrument with a Photoresistor - Scratch for Arduino (S4A) project

A project to make a musical instrument using the Arduino and Scratch for Arduino (S4A). The inspiration came from the theremin-like musical instrument project on s4a.cat

The version below uses a photoresistor. It is much simpler than the s4a.cat one and I have not used any LEDs either. I might add them in, as part 2 of the project.

A photoresistor (or light-dependent resistor, LDR, or photocell) is a light-controlled variable resistor. The resistance of a photoresistor decreases with increasing incident light intensity; in other words, it exhibits photoconductivity. A photoresistor can be applied in light-sensitive detector circuits, and light- and dark-activated switching circuits. (Wikipedia)