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These are quick challenges that you can make some progress on in 15 or 20 minutes. We'll start with these most weeks for students who arrive earlier, and we'll recommend some specific challenges based on which topics we've been covering recently.
If you're looking for something to work on at home, or if you finish another activity early, these are always a good thing to work on!
Beginner Class: Week 2 Challenges
Beginner Class: Week 2 Challenges
Turtle Art Awards
Turtle Art Awards
In Week 1 of the class we learned about Turtles and the things we can draw with them. In this mini-challenge, we will create awards for our turtles!
1. In your favourite colour, create a circle badge with "Best Artist of 2019"
HINT: adjust the font size or circle size so the word fits within the circle.
2. Recreate the "you tried" gold star (or write a more encouraging message!)
HINT:
- Use a loop to draw each of the lines.
- The pointed corner of a star is 36 degrees (180/5 = 36).
- Decide what directions the turtles would have to move to create the V shape for each corner. Forward? Backward? Turning?
BONUS CHALLENGE: Can you change your star so it has no inner lines?
(Inner angle is 108)
3. Make the gold star and badge the same colour with a variable.
HINT:
- Save your favourite colour as a variable.
- For each time you set a colour, use the variable to colour it.
Here's an answer key if you get stuck or want to check your answers!
Beginner Class: Week 3 Challenges
Beginner Class: Week 3 Challenges
Wrapping up what we've learned so far with a Turtle scavenger hunt
Wrapping up what we've learned so far with a Turtle scavenger hunt
Can't believe we're already half way through our coding class? Now's a great time to look back on what we've done so far and practice those coding skills. In this mini-challenge, a mischievous Turtle has stolen our snacks and buried them a locked safe! We need to find out where he hid the vault and what the safe combination is!
1. Where did our Turtle hide our snacks?
Luckily, when the Turtle stole our snacks he left his directions behind. Decipher where the Turtle is going to find out where he hid the safe. You can use graph paper to help you out (ask one of the volunteers to give you some paper if you don't have any).
Follow the Turtle's directions on the right, and you can check your answer here.
2. Decipher the password
Being very forgetful, the Turtle thief wrote down the safe's password on a piece of paper. Unfortunately, he encoded it before writing it down!
Match each Blockly code chunk on the left with its written Python code on the right. Careful, there are more Python lines than there are Blockly lines!
Once you've matched the Blockly and Python codes, you can put the safe's letter code in order below.
1
2
3
4
5
E
M
F
A
E
S
T
W
if programming == 'Rad': print('....')else: print('...jk.')if num_sides == 5 and num_sides <= 5: print('Not a pentagon')else if num_sides != 5: print('Definitely a pentagon')else: print('Not sure that's a shape')if programming == 'Cool': print('...and awesome.')else: print('...jk.')angle = 360/num_sidesfor count in range(int(num_sides)): turtle.right(angle) turtle.forward(30) turtle.goto(-2,0)if num_sides > 5 or num_sides < 5: print('Not a pentagon')else if num_sides == 5: print('Definitely a pentagon')else: print('Not sure that's a shape')num_sides = text_prompt(sides_question)if programming == 'Rad': print('....')else: print('...jk.')Put together the password:
1: _______________ 2: _______________ 3: _______________ 4: _______________ 5: _______________
3. Unlock the Turtle's secrets! We need to enter a secret number and draw a secret shape to open the safe.
Luckily the Turtle Thief is slow, and we saw her type "6" into this code. These commands draw the secret shape AND prints the secret number.
What is the secret shape?
What is the secret number?
If you're stuck, you can check your answer with this Trinket:
If statement challenge
If statement challenge
This week we have a logic puzzle for you to work out those if-statement muscles! Read through the code, figure out those ifs, and tell us what the code will output.
Beginner Class: Week 4 Challenges
Beginner Class: Week 4 Challenges
Baby Shark challenge (for loops)!
Baby Shark challenge (for loops)!
We wrote some code to print out the lyrics to "Baby Shark" but, oops, we messed it up! There are a couple of syntax errors you'll need to fix before the code will even run, and then there might be some more mistakes that will make the output... not what you wanted. See if you can fix our mistakes so that your output matches what's in the "Instructions" tab.
For loop drawing challenge!
For loop drawing challenge!
Pick one of the images below and try to draw it using turtles.
Hints:
- Spirally triangle: The angle you need to turn for a triangle is 360/3, or 120.
- Stars on stars on stars: This one looks really hard! Start with the two middle (purple and blue) layers. Once you figure those out, the rest is easier than it looks.
- Curvy stars: There's no built-in tool in turtles to make a curved line (besides a circle). But you know everything you need to know to create one anyway! It might take a lot of steps, but you know how to make Python do something a bunch of times without a ton of work on your part. How could you create a curved line using, say, 100 very small steps?
- Many-point star: For a 5-point star, the angle you need to turn is 180 - (180/5), or 144. The same rule works for any odd number of points, so for an n-pointed star you would turn 180 - (180/n). For an even number of points, you can use 180 - (360/n).
- Shallow-angle star: This is similar to the multi-point star, but swap out the first 180 for a smaller number.
Spirally triangle
Curvy star 2
Shallow-angle star with colors
Stars on stars on stars
Many-point star
Curvy star
Shallow-angle star
Beginner Class: Week 5 Challenges
Beginner Class: Week 5 Challenges
Let's play some games!
Let's play some games!
This week and next week, we'll be working to write our own games in Python! If you have an idea for a game that you want to try, that's great and we can help you build it. But if you're not sure what kind of game to build, we have three projects you can try:
- Snake (where you move a turtle around the screen to gobble up snacks) - play the game here
- Guess the number (the program chooses a random number and the player has to guess what it is with warmer/colder cues) - play the game here
- Choose-your-own-adventure (make decisions to guide your player through an adventure) - play the game here
Click on the links above and spend a few minutes trying out each game to see which one you might like to code. Then, we'll make a plan on how to do it!
Advanced Class Challenges
Advanced Class Challenges
You will be able to run the code interactively, but you will not be able to save your work! Click File>Download as>Notebook when you're done if you want to save what you've written.
Connect 4 challenge!
Connect 4 challenge!
Start with the Connect 4 code, and add in 3 new variables:
- The width of the board (how many spaces across)
- The height of the board
- How many pieces you need to connect in order to win.
When you're done, you should be able to set these 3 variables to whatever number you choose. For example, your board could be 3 across and 10 high, and you need to get 3 in a row to win. You can use the original Connect 4 code (where the user chooses and column and the piece drops as far down as it can), or your modified tic tac toe game (where the user picks both the row and the column).
Pokemon data vis debugging challenge!
Pokemon data vis debugging challenge!
CSV input/output challenge!
CSV input/output challenge!
Turtle Party!
Turtle Party!
This is very similar to the "for loop drawing challenge" above, for anybody looking for more practice.
Turtle Party: The focus here is on solving geometry-related problems to draw some really cool stars. Solutions are here if you get stuck or want to check your work! The images below show what your drawing might look like for some of the steps:
Exercise 2 (31 corners)
Exercise 5
Exercise 3 (32 corners)
Exercise 6
Exercise 4a (101 corners, base angle 180)
If you're still looking for more challenges...
If you're still looking for more challenges...
...check out the step-by-step Trinkets to draw a bullseye or make your very own holiday tree!
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