This could be used as a starter for Kindergarten - 1st or 2nd Grade to create a program to draw a square. Start with demonstrating drawing a square on a whiteboard or having students each draw a square on a piece of paper or a whiteboard or by having a student "draw" a square by using chalk on a sidewalk or have a student walk in a square. Then talk about how you could tell someone to draw a square if they didn't know what a square looked like: They would have to put the pen or pencil or crayon down on the paper or whiteboard and then move the pen in a line and then turn and move the pen in another line of the same length, etc. and then at the end pick up the pen. Students think it's very funny when they tell you to draw a line to start the square and you draw it in mid-air because they never told you to put the marker on the whiteboard. Then it's time to write a program to draw a square. Funny thing about computers - they only do exactly what they're told and they don't know things like what a square looks like. The program would then be opened and each type of block explained. I tell students that a program should always start with a block that has a hat on it and can't be joined at the top to another block - these are events. I also talk about how we erase (clear) the whiteboard if we want to draw something new and how we have to put our pen down on the whiteboard or on paper to draw and so does the pencil sprite. I then explain and demonstrate what the move block does and what the turn block does. I talk about how computers can do things REALLY fast so that we sometimes have to tell computers to wait so we can see what they are doing - the wait blocks could be eliminated and the square would still be drawn but you wouldn't "see" the pencil drawing it. Students would then open their copy of the program and then put all of the blocks together to draw a square. Students could then be challenged to try to make a triangle or a pentagon by changing the code and/or adding a new sprite to draw the new shape. The only hints I give are that they can change the number in the turn to make it turn more or less and that the number in all of the turns should be the same. Depending on when students finish the square, I might start a 2nd day with this challenge and start by drawing a square and drawing a semi-circle around the outer angle and again say how that is 90 degrees. I then show the code for a square so they can see the 90 degrees. I then draw a triangle and draw a semi-circle around the outer angle for it and ask the students if I drew more of a circle or less for that angle. We then talk about how this will mean that the angle for turn on the triangle needs to be bigger. You may also need to coach them to count by tens or fives rather than ones when they start to change the number on the turns. You will need to "See inside" to see the code students would need to assemble to draw the square.
