Welcome to Scratch! Scratch is like digital LEGO blocks for creating games and animations. You don't need to type any code - just drag and drop colorful blocks to create amazing programs. The stage area is where your characters come to life, and code blocks snap together like puzzle pieces to control what happens.
Meet the Scratch cat - your first sprite! Sprites are characters that can move and interact on the stage. Watch as our cat demonstrates basic movements. It can move forward, turn around, and navigate anywhere on the stage using simple motion blocks. The stage has coordinates like a map, helping sprites know exactly where they are.
Let's create a dancing cat program! We start with the green flag event block that runs when we click start. Then we add a forever loop to make the dance continuous. Inside the loop, we change costumes to make the cat appear to dance, add music, and wait between moves. Watch as our cat comes to life with this simple sequence of blocks!
Now let's make our program interactive! We can add keyboard controls using 'when key pressed' blocks. The spacebar can trigger special dance moves, arrow keys can move the cat around, and 'if-then' blocks let us add conditions. We can even detect mouse clicks and touches to make the cat respond to user input instantly!
Now let's build a complete game called 'Catch the Falling Stars'! We combine everything we've learned: stars fall from the top using motion blocks, the cat moves with arrow keys, and we detect collisions using 'touching' blocks. When the cat catches a star, we add points to the score variable and play sound effects. This shows how simple blocks create complex, interactive games!