1. Remix the Dance Party Starter Project

Hello and welcome to day 2 of Scratch Music! Today, you’re going to learn how to use a forever loop and explore how to create movement in Scratch while building a dance animation.

In today’s club session, you’ll learn about an important computer science concept: loops. A loop is simply a set of instructions that repeats over and over.

Like many computer science concepts, loops exist all around you. In music, repeated musical phrases called “ostinatos” appear throughout a song, like the repeated notes in the famous “Jaws” theme. Dance choreography also contains sets of repeated movements that are like “loops.” Even your daily routine could be seen as a repeating set of instructions: Get up. Eat breakfast. Go to school. Eat lunch. Go home. Eat Dinner. Go to bed. Repeat those instructions the next day, and the day after that.

Forever loops tell a computer to follow the same set of instructions over and over again.

In today’s Dance Party project, you'll use forever loops to make Cassy dance forever, to music that never stops playing. You'll use a forever loop to make the music play and to make Cassy dance. This first screencast will show you how to sign in to Scratch and open the Dance Party starter project. First, watch as the screencast walks you through the steps, then do them on your own.

To open the starter project, click the link next to this screencast that says, “Dance Party: Starter Project.”

Next, click remix. You will see a sign-in box where you will enter your Scratch sign-in information. This will create and save a copy of this starter project in your Scratch account.

Now, it’s your turn. Go ahead and open the starter project link on this page and sign in to Scratch.

Once you’ve finished this step, return to this CS First page and click the green arrow to move on to the next screencast.