Drawing Shapes ✏️
What You'll Learn
- How the pen draws lines as the turtle moves
- How to lift and lower the pen to control drawing
- How to draw a square using only four commands
The Turtle's Pen
The turtle carries an invisible pen. By default, the pen is down — meaning whenever the turtle moves, it draws a line behind it on the canvas.
Two new blocks control the pen:
- ✏ Pen Down — puts the pen on the canvas so the turtle draws as it moves
- ✋ Pen Up — lifts the pen so the turtle moves without drawing
This lets you create drawings with gaps — like picking up a pencil in the middle of a sketch and putting it back down somewhere else.
The turtle always starts with the pen down. So if you just add Move Forward, it draws right away. Add Pen Up at the start if you want to move to a starting position without drawing.
Drawing a Square
A square has 4 equal sides and 4 right-angle corners. To draw one with the turtle:
- Move Forward 80
- Turn Right 90°
- Move Forward 80
- Turn Right 90°
- Move Forward 80
- Turn Right 90°
- Move Forward 80
- Turn Right 90°
That is 8 blocks for one square. Notice the pattern? The same two blocks repeat 4 times. In Lesson 5 you will learn a much faster way to write this using loops.
A square has 4 corners, each turning 90°. Total turning = 4 × 90° = 360°. A full circle is 360°. Every closed shape you draw will always total exactly 360° of turning — that's a real geometry rule!
Part 1: Build the 8-block program above and draw a perfect square.
Part 2: A rectangle has 2 long sides and 2 short sides. Change the step values in your program to make a rectangle. How is it different from the square?
Bonus: Use Pen Up and Pen Down to draw two separate shapes that don't connect.
1. What does the Pen Up block do?
2. How many Turn Right 90° blocks do you need to draw a complete square?
3. The total degrees turned when drawing any closed shape is always…