By Mary Adelaide, ScratchEd Intern
As Halloween approaches, teachers and students alike may be preoccupied with costume planning, ghost stories, and (most importantly) candy. Here are five projects students can try out to capitalize on their Halloween spirit while expanding their knowledge of coding with Scratch.
1. Create the costume of their wildest (or scariest) dreams. Push the boundaries of practicality and have a sprite dress up in an elaborate outfit, perhaps one that lends itself to special abilities such as flying or becoming invisible. Or make an interactive project that invites viewers to customize a costume for a sprite, choosing from a variety of clothing and costume items. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/10007164/
2. Animate Halloween-themed jokes selected from a pre-approved, appropriate list, as Rosemary Slattery explains in this video. Using blocks like “say,” “receive,” “broadcast,” and “wait,” students can show the back-and-forth of the joke between two spooky sprites. Switching up the costumes and backdrops during the animation adds to the ambiance.
3. Make a pumpkin carving game to give friends and family a chance to design the perfect pumpkin. Here’s one example with many remixes for further inspiration. Background music can set the scene for a relaxing or eerie pumpkin carving experience - try searching by genre and mood within YouTube’s collection of freely available music.
4. Explore anatomy through projects involving skeletons. Learn about the names of different bones, or get a skeleton dancing to see how it looks in motion.
5. Build a haunted house for viewers to explore. Heighten the suspense with a choose-your-own-adventure format (one example here) or an escape room scenario (example) that challenges players to puzzle their way out.
Have more Halloween ideas? Share them on the discussion forums!