ADVENTURES Of MYRTLE THE TURTLE

The last issue of "GO" contained a story by Chris Gregory, in which time-travelling Myrtle the Turtle met the Egyptian Goddess Sesheta. Sesheta asked Myrtle to help build the Pyramids. Myrtle got as far as drawing a triangle and a square. This issues looks at other activities using the square and the triangle.

Draw a House Use the Turtle to draw a picture of a house.
This activity encourages the 'top down' approach to problem solving. Logo was designed to encourage this way of working. It involves breaking down a complex task into several smaller, simpler tasks. HOUSE is broken down into the more manageable units of SQUARE and TRI.
This may be more complicated than it seems. The first attempt may result in the triangle being inside the square. This is not seen as a'wrong' solution and children are encouraged to approach mistakes with a view to 'debugging' them.

Possible 'wrong' solutions require debugging.

House windows and doors are extras and require using LOGO variable factor

Drawing a Picture The HOUSE procedure is only one way of using SQUARE and TRI. Children should be encouraged to create other pictures using these and other procedures.

There are several other solutions to the pyramid net problem which could be explored by the children.

Making a Pyramid Producing a three-dimensional object from its constituent two-dimensional shapes has a significant effect on developing a child's understanding of the link between real objects and geometric symbology.
Ask the children to work out how many faces there are on a pyramid, and what shape they are. Draw the shapes for a pyramid on card, using the Turtle. Cut out the shapes and stick them together with sticky tape to make a model.
Ask the children to examine their model and work out if they can program the Turtle to draw a 'net' for the pyramid.
A net is the pattern of shapes created by cutting along the edges of a solid and laying it out in one piece.

Making a Cube Ask the children to examine a cube. How many faces does it have? Draw the faces with the Turtle, cut them out and stick them together with sticky tape to make a cube. Ask the children to program the Turtle to draw a net for a cube. How many different ways can they find to do this?

Some of the other solid shapes that can be made by using the procedures TRI and SQUARE.