Draw a Sprite and Background

This lesson is suitable for very young children especially if they are already familiar with graphics packages. They first learn to draw a sprite and a background and then create several sprites and move them around with the mouse to compose a picture.

They can add text if there is time and save and print the final picture.

Scratch is useful as a drawing package but is limited to a particular size. The main learning element of this lesson is to understand that a sprite is a graphic element that can move around the screen independently of the other graphics elements. The background appears behind the sprite and adds context to the drawing.

Children make a sprite and experiment with different drawing tools, many of which may already be familiar to them. They can resize the finished sprite and duplicate it and move it around the screen. More sprites can be added and located on the screen before finishing off the drawing with a background. Sprites and backgrounds can be imported from existing graphics files located on the drive.

Sample pictures might be an aquarium with various fish and plants or a house with several family members and pets located on the screen. Pupils can print and save their completed pictures and make several compositions by moving the sprites to different positions on the screen before printing for a second time.