Useful Code

Moving the Turtle

turtle.forward(100)
turtle.back(50)
turtle.right(90)
turtle.left(45)
turtle.goto(10,10)
turtle.home()
turtle.setheading(0)

Changing the Pen

turtle.pencolor('red')
turtle.penup()
turtle.pendown()
turtle.pensize(4)

Changing the Board

turtle.reset()
turtle.bgcolor('blue')
turtle.showturtle()
turtle.hideturtle()

Exercise

Draw the following

1. A square with sides of length 100
2. An equilateral triangle with sides of length 80
3. A noughts and crosses board
4. Draw a star by turning an angle of 144 degrees.
5. A red hexagon on a blue background.

Lesson 2

The following program draws a purple square with a black border. Note the use of begin_fill() and end_fill()

import turtle

turtle.fillcolor('purple')
turtle.pencolor('black')

turtle.begin_fill()
turtle.forward(100)
turtle.left(90)
turtle.forward(100)
turtle.left(90)
turtle.forward(100)
turtle.left(90)
turtle.forward(100)
turtle.left(90)
turtle.end_fill()

The above requires a lot of cut and paste code: always a sign that there is a better way of doing things. Here’s one way:

import turtle

turtle.fillcolor('purple')
turtle.pencolor('black')

turtle.begin_fill()

for times in range(4):
    turtle.forward(100)
    turtle.left(90)

turtle.end_fill()

We are going to be drawing lots of squares. We can define the  code to draw a square as a function, that way we can reuse it. (Learning  to use functions is the main reason we are using turtle graphics!)

import turtle

def square():
    for times in range(4):
	turtle.forward(100)
	turtle.left(90)

turtle.fillcolor('purple')
turtle.pencolor('black')

turtle.begin_fill()
square()
turtle.end_fill()

We can add a size parameter to the function. Now we can draw squares of different sizes.

import turtle

def square(size):
    for times in range(4):
	turtle.forward(size)
	turtle.left(90)

square(50)
square(100)
square(200)

Exercise

1) Enter the following code and run it. Make sure you understand what it’s doing.

import turtle

def square():
    for times in range(4):
	turtle.forward(100)
	turtle.left(90)

for n in range(8):
    square()
    turtle.right(45)

2) What do you think the following code will do? Enter it and run it.

import turtle

def square(size):
    for times in range(4):
	turtle.forward(size)
	turtle.left(90)

for n in range(8):
    square(20*n)

3) Define a function to draw a triangle.
4) Use your triangle function to draw the following shape

Extension

1. Write a function to draw a pentagon
2. Write a function to draw a hexagon
3. Draw a function that accepts a parameter number_of_sides that draws a  polygon with that number of sides
4. Write a function to draw a chessboard
5. Write a function to draw a honeycomb