Learning Music in the strangest places

Trying to make learning music fun can be difficult, but games are a good start.  I like to try to find opportunities any place to experiment with gamification of music theory.  While my kids were swimming, I used some masking tape to set up a staff on a brick wall as shown below.

Five lines represent the staff and the mortar/bricks above and below the staff help to identify the lines (mortar) and spaces (bricks) outside of the staff.  I used a different colored tape (duct tape) cut into a circle to act as the note.  I then move the note to different positions and the kids needed to call out the note (in solfege or as letter note) within 3 seconds or else dive to the bottom of the pool.
Lots of fun

Week13

This week is an extension on the Italian game we started last week.  This week the focus is on using spoken words and matching images to the spoke words.  A simple version of he progrma is shown here. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/77639592/ 
The Italian teacher has provided some basic italian words to use.
Grade 3 students are working animals, so some animal words are here:
Grade 4 students are working on objects in the house with some words found here
Grade 5 and above are working on clothing, with some words here
And some motivational phrases like "hurray" and "Try again" here.

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Week 12

This week we're trying to connect Italian classes to programming, but creating a game that has students matching objects to Italian words.  Check out : https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/76524776/

The goal of the projects is to select the correct translation for the center “card”, repeating for each possible entry. This  puts quite a few of the previous lesson's knowledge into a single program which some students completed in the 1.5 hours of the session.  If you having completed it yet, keep going as the Italian teacher is really keen to have games made by her own stduents.

Week 11

Delayed in getting this out.  In week 11 we got our new Uni-students to start running the club sessions while I and other parents looked on.  I think having young adults run these sessions is perhaps more inspiring that having an old foggy like me.  We're also starting to share projects that each session is based on.  This weeks session is about angles and flipping.  We're using right and left arrows to rotate a central object and space bar to fire some object see: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/74621572/

the stuents are encouraged to change the central chaarcter and what is being fired to customize the game.  then maybe add some objects coming in from the side.  This is the basis for an old asteriod style game, see:  https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/73867726/

Then we looked at a spinnign wheel game, where the the trick is to have a message that says where it lands (in what quadrant) to do this you need to understand where is 0->90, 90->180 etc to identify what quadrant you are in see:  https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/74620612/

Angles are really important in later schooling both for maths as well as gaming
Good luck

Week10

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Week 9 (11 Aug)

This week we discussed scrolling games.  Such games are particularly important for platform based games which many students are familiar with.  We had a demonstration of a great "potato" run game and then discussed the basics of scrolling in Scratch.  The key concepts are:
1) a backgound is not used, instead a whole screen is used as a sprite that can be moved
2) the player is basically stationary, but that the screen sprite moves to the left or right
3) multiple scren sprites can be used to may a very long scrolling game, but you need to be carful to match the items and color of each screen sprite used

The basic process is demonstarted below that was shown to the stduents this week.  Students were actively involved with many starting , and some completing a basic game in under an hour.  We even had someone scrooling up and down !!!.  Keep going and let me know what your create .  Please post comments.
Scrolling game concepts.  See Figure 1,2 and 3 for an outline to creat a basic scrolling game.  I have used the Cat and changed the costume to make him look like he is moving , but only when the arrow keys are pressed.  Create a ScrollX variable.  This is used to set the current location of the screen sprite.  Change the ScrollX variable by a NEGACTIVE number when moving to the right and a POSITIVE number when moving to the left

Figure 1: Sprite 1 (The cat or other object moving through the scene).  The blocks are shown to the right.  

Figure 2 shows the Screen Sprite and the blocks required in this sprite.  By setting the x-position of the screen sprite to ScrollX, the Screen Sprite moves in the OPPOSITE direction to the direction the arrow key is pressed !!  This gives the illusion that the cat is moving.

Figure 2.  Left most Screen Sprite (Sprite4) and the blocks required in this sprite.  

Figure 3 shows the 2nd Screen Sprite (Sprite3) and the blocks required in this sprite.  In this code 480 is added to the ScrollX value.  Note the 480=2*240, which is the entire with of the screen.  So when the ScrollX value reaches say -490 (because you pushed the right array key many times), the Sprite3 is now centered at x=-490 + 480 = -10.  This is on the screen and very near the enter, so the 2nd Screen Sprite (Sprite3) is now in the center of the screen.  We can keep repeating this by adding more screens.  I will think of an easy way to explain how these screen can be looped around to may the game appear to be infinite and get back to you.  An example of this Scrolling example is shown as an animation in Figure 4

Figure 3:  Screen Sprite #2 (Sprite3) and the blocks required in this sprite.  

Figure 4:  Animation of the Cat showing how Scrolling works.  Check out the ScrollX number in the top left and how each Screensprte seemlessly moves across.

Week 8 (4 Aug)

This week we discussed logic statements in Scratch and in particular AND lofic.  This is illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1.  A possible use of the AND logic in Scratch.  AND logic table is shown.  Both A AND B must be true for the combined statement to be true and the block within the If statement run.

We can use this kind of logic to determine if two events are true.  I asked the students this week to try to use an AND statement in their code.  An example application might be an game where you need to find specific items to completed specific tasks.  These items can be collected by a player and these items are sometimes called pick-ups.  This is particularly important when creating role-playing games (RPG).  For example, see the list shown in Figure 2a.

Figure 2(a) a simple list which could be combined with the AND logic function to check if to two items are available, and if so, the action that would result;  (b) an example of such an application, being  a key brought up to a door, at which point the door opens.

 It may be that each item must be collected in order to operate a specific thing and produce a specific result.  For example s shown in Figure 2b, a key must be collected and brought to a door in order for the door to open.  Try this AND concept with a simple RPG and let me know how it goes.