Welcome to Scratch! Scratch is a free coding language made by MIT where you snap colourful blocks together to make games, stories, and animations. You do not type code — you drag blocks that click together like puzzle pieces.
The Stage
The Stage is the big white area on the right of the screen. It is where your project comes to life. The Stage is like a theatre stage: everything happens here. It uses a grid where the centre is x: 0, y: 0. The Stage is always 480 steps wide and 360 steps tall.
Sprites
A sprite is a character or object that can move and do things on the Stage. The orange cat you see at the start is called Scratch Cat, the default sprite. You can add more sprites from the sprite library, draw your own, or upload a picture.
- Each sprite has its own scripts (the blocks you build for it).
- Each sprite can have many costumes — different looks it can switch between.
- You click a sprite in the sprite list to select it and see its blocks.
The Blocks Palette
On the left is the Blocks Palette, full of colour-coded blocks. In the middle is the Code Area where you drag blocks to build scripts. Blocks are grouped by colour: blue for Motion, purple for Looks, yellow for Events, and more.
Backdrops
The Stage can have backdrops — background pictures like a park, a beach, or space. Backdrops are to the Stage what costumes are to a sprite.
Remember
- The Stage is where the action happens; sprites are the characters on it.
- Sprites have costumes; the Stage has backdrops.
- Drag blocks from the palette into the Code Area to build scripts.
Now you know the main parts of Scratch. Let us start building!