Finding Ordered Pairs Game / Scratch

I was playing around creating a game with Scratch that gives a student 10 points for clicking on (or near, in this case) each ordered pair given by the "cat".

I started thinking about how I could help 6th graders create this game.  One thing I realized is that the program requires measuring the distance between two points, and sometimes those points have negative coordinates!!

California Common Core Standards don't require 6th graders to learn how to add and subtract integers.  I still teach these skills, though, because integer operations open up a huge world to young programmers.  One of the fallacies of state standards for math is that they claim that they want children to be creative and solve "real world" problems, but then they mandate a sequence of learning that doesn't lend itself to creativity or problem solving.


Programming is, far and away, the best way to teach kids how to hack away at problems and find creative solutions. It teaches a form of iterative troubleshooting that the Common Core standards claim to encourage.  With programming, the only tools a kid needs to display and develop his/her innate creativity is a computer and a basic understanding of arithmetic.  

I created two different versions of this program: one that uses the distance formula and one that just measures vertical and horizontal distance.