Coding For Kids For Dummies

Project 3

Sketcher Etcher

Etch A Sketch is a toy that first appeared in 1960 and is still around today. In this project, you code your own Sketcher Etcher. The Sketcher Etcher toy has a red frame and a light gray drawing area. Controls at the bottom of the toy allow a player to draw horizontally (left or right) and vertically (up and down) using straight lines. The player can only draw in the gray area — if the drawing pen, or stylus, reaches the red frame, it encounters a boundary the pen can't go past. After drawing for a while, the player can erase the screen, returning to a clean gray slate, ready to draw again.

Brainstorm

During one of my first years teaching coding, I had a student named Matthew who made every project into a Whoopi project in honor of actress Whoopi Goldberg. Even his Sketcher Etcher featured a little Whoopi drawing stylus. Other students changed their styluses to characters and objects you might consider using for your project:

• Footballs, basketballs, and other balls
• Penguins
• Abstract shapes

Start a New Project

Begin creating your Sketcher Etcher toy by starting a new project as follows:

1. Start MicroWorlds EX.
2. From the yellow MicroWorlds EX startup screen, select Free Mode.

   A new project opens.

3. From the menu bar, choose File⇒New Project Size⇒Full Screen ...